 Hello everyone! The thing that makes LinkedIn different from any other social media site is that it is made for business networking. Whether you are looking to transition your career or find investors and key collaborators, your ability to effectively brand yourself and engage through LinkedIn can pay dividends for your future. When it comes to employing LinkedIn, Casey Valenti is a subject matter expert. The company she founded and leads a CEO, Sigma Forces, benefit immeasurably from the expertise she is sharing today. Casey checks a lot of boxes for the Veterinary Community. She's a former Army officer and current Army spouse who's joining us today from Busan, South Korea. Casey, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Dan, so much for having me. I actually, I learned about Patriot Boot Camp last year when I was working at International Scientific Advisors. So the CEO, Dr. Eric Hansen, he was a successful graduate of the program and he shared so many wonderful stories about the program, about the community, so it's full circle for me right now. I'm so excited to be here and to be able to share. I'm going to go ahead and pull my slides up and we'll get started. Great, thank you. And Casey, while you do that, just to validate your sacrifice today, what time did you say it is there right now? It is 3.01 a.m. You're getting a big digital applause from the audience right now, so thank you. So if you see me drinking from my bowl of coffee this morning, it's very appropriate. Isn't this caffeine connect? So I don't want any judgment. But yeah, let's go ahead and get started. And I'd like to share just a little background about myself. I left active duty back in 2016. And this is embarrassing to admit, but I did not begin my LinkedIn journey until years later. And I knew if I knew what I know now, I would have created that LinkedIn profile. The day LinkedIn began business because it has changed so much for me and it's been so powerful for me over time and learning the hard way. I realized the power of LinkedIn. I learned how to effectively optimize my profile, how to build an online presence and a network. And as a result, it has increased my job opportunity significantly. That's actually how I landed a job from South Korea with International Scientific Advisors, the company I mentioned earlier. And as very recently, it's played a really significant role in my journey to entrepreneurship and now launching my own company. So today I really want to share the foundations of building an optimized LinkedIn profile that is specifically beneficial for entrepreneurs on the verge of either launching your business or starting to really build and invest in your personal brand. And before you can do either of those things, it's really important to have a LinkedIn profile that stands out and it supports your journey and is consistent with your professional brand. So that's where we're going to that's how we're going to position things today. Just know this is a this is foundation to be to have a great LinkedIn presence. So let's go over the agenda. Two big agenda items and I'm going to have to talk really fast. So if you see me looking off, it's because I'm trying to make sure I say everything that I want to say, because I'm trying to cram in five years of knowledge that I've gained and they're giving me 45 minutes. Guys, this is not on me. This is on them. I have 45 minutes to get this in. So we're going to define LinkedIn as a networking tool very, very briefly. And then what I want to do is spend most of the time going section by section and how to optimize each one and make it consistent with your personal brand. And before we do that, let me just point this out that LinkedIn has over 900 million members across more than 200 countries. It's the world's largest professional online networking tool. And it is an extremely effective way to reach people in and outside of your existing networking circles outside of your background, outside of your industry. And LinkedIn offers a basic account with four options. So you can do premium accounts and we'll kind of dig into that a little bit later. If we have time, I'm trying to save the best for this presentation. But with premium, you can learn new skills. So I want to share at the very end how to access the LinkedIn learning so you can dig in deeper into some of the courses that I find very beneficial specifically on building your personal brand. Building a strong LinkedIn profile helps you to expand your network. LinkedIn makes suggestions based on the commonalities between your profile information and other LinkedIn members. So by going through each section of the profile, which we're going to do, I'm going to show you how to optimize each one in a way that LinkedIn is going to make solid recommendations for you to make more connections and expand your network, which is what you want to do when you're becoming an entrepreneur, when you're trying to make these powerful connections like Dan mentioned in his introduction to find clients, to find investors. All of these these things are so important. And LinkedIn is is a great tool to do that. So LinkedIn profile is what I like to call a social resume. You want to ensure that your content you include on your LinkedIn profile matches the personal brand you are trying to achieve. And each section needs to be consistent with your overarching professional and personal brand. And the sections we're going to really highlight today are your profile intro section, your about section, your experience, education, licenses and certifications, skills and endorsements and volunteering. If we have more time, I'll go into the the additional profile sections. But these are the main ones we're going to focus on. So let's dig into the very first one, which is your profile intro section. This box right here and everything contained inside it is called your profile intro. It is a snapshot of who you are. And it includes your background image, your profile photo, your name, your headline, your current position, education, contact information. And most importantly for entrepreneurs, your call to action button. And we're going to talk about each of these items. It's important to know that users spend about six seconds or less. Analyzing this information and deciding whether or not they're going to connect with you or scroll down further to learn more about you. So you have about six seconds to capture someone's attention. So it is extremely important that you at least optimize this section. So as soon as I get done with this part, if you want to go, as long as you take this section away, you are good. Then let's go over each area in the profile intro section. All right, I'm going to read some notes to make sure that I do not forget everything here. So you want to make sure your profile picture is a recent photo of yourself. And this is tough for me personally, because I have to keep my hair short so that I don't have to keep updating my profile picture. So same with you. You want to look exactly like you look now in your profile picture. You want to make sure that it's career appropriate. And what I mean by that is if you're if you're trying to gain clients that are C-suite or higher, or you need to make sure that you are dressing the part. Now, if you're a copywriter and you're doing behind the scenes work, maybe you don't need to be wearing a suit. So that's what I mean by career appropriate. You need to appear alone. Sometimes I see photos that are a little distracting. It's like a family photo. And you want to make sure the photo is a visual representation of you and your personal brand. You don't want it to be confusing as to who in the picture is this profile for. And you want to make sure the profile, the picture is centered. That you're smiling and it's a high quality photo. And some here's some data for you. LinkedIn data shows people with a photo received nine times more connection requests and up to 20 times more profile views. That is huge. Without a profile picture, it is harder for potential connections to confirm. It's you. It also implies to new conduct. It this also applies to new connections from networking events. And if a LinkedIn search for you returns with many people say you have a common name, this will be the deciding factor, whether or not they have the right person that they're searching for. Now, our background image, our brains are hardwired to notice images first. So your background image, which I like to call your personal billboard, which is this area right here. It is your first chance to grab the user's attention. It's an opportunity for you to project your personal brand. For you to make your profile so visually appealing that no one wants to leave. Everyone wants to send you a connection request and they know right there what you stand for. And I change mine from time to time. And actually, since I've taken this screenshot, mine has already changed. So it's OK to update your profile and see what works. If you notice that you're getting declined in connection requests, maybe it's time to take a look at your your banner, your profile picture and your profile section and make these these updates. So you want to add a background image that reflects your interests, your profession or a huge milestone in your career. Let's go to the next section, your profile name. I won't spend too much time on this. What I do want to say is that you want to use your common name. You want to use the additional name field as necessary. So if you've remarried, your name has changed, you do want to include that in there because people that have met you under a different name might search for that name. And you want to make sure that you appear in the search results so that everyone can find you if your name. I always recommend using the pronunciation tool, regardless if you have a complicated name or not, just to be safe. And my mom always told me that how you do anything is how you do everything. And I think if you use every feature on your LinkedIn profile, it shows a level of professionalism that that is really appreciated. So I use the the pronunciation tool and it has helped save a lot of embarrassing conversations because when you first meet someone, the last thing you want to do is correct them on how to say your name. It doesn't set the right mood for a coffee chat or that first connection with someone. Let's go on to the next section, which is your profile headline section. Now, this is extremely, extremely important. Everything in your profile intro section is important, but let's talk about your headline. So your headline is the LinkedIn equivalent to a headline in a news feed. It needs to grab the attention. It needs to entice the viewer to keep reading. The headline not only shows up on your profile, but also in the home feed. Every time you post or publish content on LinkedIn, you have a limited number of and you have a limited number of characters on your headlines. So you need to use them wisely. And let's talk about how you can do this. So here are some some quick tips that I always recommend. You want to include your role. This may include your title, what you do, what you stand for. You want to use keywords for your industry or and you want to separate each word by vertical bars that has been shown to be the preference for everyone across the board, whether it's recruiters, connection requests. It is a very clean way to separate your thoughts, your key words and the last thing you want to include is a little tag line. And mine right now says equipping leaders to reinforce their careers, which is very consistent with my company's mission over at Sigma Forces. And so you want to make sure your tag line is is really representative of what you feel you can do as an entrepreneur or what you stand for on your professional brand. So this will be unique to you. And it's something that I want you to take a lot of time to think about. And I recommend taking the key words or key skill sets and tying those in to kind of this powerful statement of what you can offer by way of your company or through your professional brand. So definitely spend a lot of time thinking through a really catchy headline. And I love helping with catchy headlines. So if you want to find me over at LinkedIn, you can send me help requests for your headline. And I love thinking these through with people all the time. So the next area in the profile intro section is your current position and education. And these are also two very important elements in the profile intro section, and they are populated from a little bit further down on your profile, on the experience and education part of your profile. Once you update those sections, you are given the option to make these two icons, this one and this one available in the profile intro section. And there are two reasons why it is extremely important that, one, you're updating these correctly, and two, that you are making them visible in that profile intro section. So the first one is, and I notice this a lot actually, is that people will, by mistake, not connect the right network. So say, for example, I'm trying to connect Sigma forces to my profile, and when I start typing Sigma, I accidentally click another company, and then there's no logo. You'll see sometimes people will have a missing logo. That's an indication that you have selected the wrong company, the wrong institution, and you want to make sure that you're connecting, you recognize that logo, you're connecting yourself to the right network because LinkedIn uses this insight to make connection requests to expand your network. The second thing is if you make these two icons available and visible in your profile intro section, then when people are spending those six seconds on your profile that we mentioned earlier, they are able to click right here or right here, and it drags them instantly to the bottom of your profile directly to those sections, which means people are spending a longer time on your profile. So this is about conversion, and that's exactly what you want. You want people to be captured in your profile intro section. You want them to have a way to easily click and stay on your profile longer, learn more about you, and feel the need to reach out and connect with you, and you will do that by allowing them to go down and read more about you. So let's go to the next section. This is very important, your location, your industry, contact information, as well as this call to action. I don't want to forget to talk about that, so don't let me forget. But members who include their location receive up to 19 times more profile views and over 300 people search by industry each week. Now, the funny thing is, is industry is not actually visible when you're looking at someone's profile. It's in the background. It's a setting that you select and it is doing so much work for you. People search by industry. When you start going at the top and searching by company, industry, location, these are filters people use to narrow down connection requests. So even though it's not visible from your profile, a public display, you want to make sure that that setting is updated and it's okay to change it frequently depending on what your goals are. So let's talk about your call to action. Now, sometimes people don't realize that you are able to add a clickable link here. Now, as an entrepreneur, building a personal brand, this is such a great opportunity to put a call to action there, show more about your business, more about your personal brand. So say you're a freelance marketer, right? You want to put your portfolio right here so people don't even have to scroll. Say they missed these opportunities to click and scroll down further on your page. Well, there's another opportunity to catch their attention and to share more about yourself and that is by clicking this call to action. So say with the example of the freelance marketer, say you have an online portfolio or say you have a company, we can even use myself, my company is linked here and you can customize the link preview, which is also important. So give people a reason to click out and learn more about yourself and think that through and that might also change over time depending on what your personal goals are, professional goals are, but just know it is available to you and it's a very powerful feature in the profile intro section. Let's go to a very popular section, which is your about section. The summary on your profile, it's the number one section people really read through on your LinkedIn. So if you impress them in your profile intro section, the next place they're headed is your about section. And actually this is an old example from my profile that I actually do not recommend doing. So use this as a do not do example. What I was doing here was at the time when I took the screenshot, I was an employment seeker. I was not in the mindset yet of entrepreneur being an entrepreneur, launch my own business. So what I was doing was trying to optimize my keywords and I kind of just dumped them in my profile. And I love looking back at this so I can share with people kind of what not to do. And so let's go over things you should do. You need to write in the first person. You need to come across very confident, write at least 40 words. And I leave that in there that's more specific to if you're an employment seeker when you have to use at least 40 words to show up in a recruiter's search. But overall it's a good general rule that you have enough information in this section about yourself so that you are taken serious. And why not? It's so much space there to share who you are. And if you go to my profile now on LinkedIn, I've updated the section and I use it as an opportunity to tell my story. And I hope that people find it compelling enough to want to connect with me and yeah, build a relationship online. I'm out here in South Korea, very isolated. So LinkedIn has been such a great powerful tool for me. Another thing is you want to let your personality and your professional brand shine. You don't have to keep it very professional the whole time. I always recommend keeping that first paragraph very professional, straightforward. And then the second one, you can kind of let people in. I share that I struggle with a posture syndrome. At one point I talked about how I do yoga. You want people to get a sense of who you are and if you would connect in the real world offline. Would you be able to connect with this person? Is this someone that you could see yourself having coffee with? So you want to be a real person but you also want to let people know that aside from being a real person that does yoga, maybe struggles with imposter syndrome that you can bring so much to the table. This is what your goals are. And yeah, to really emphasize this you want to include who you are, what you do and your contributions or impact on business. You want to use keywords relevant to your position and industry so you show up in more searches. And I always recommend this is another opportunity to throw in a call to action. So at the time the call to action I was using was it takes a community to do great things. Let's connect. You can list your email here. You can, as much contact information as you're comfortable putting there, put a call to action. Maybe they didn't catch your link at the top in your profile intro section and now they're at your about section. Here's the second opportunity to get them to connect with you. Let's go to the next section which is the education section. This is my second favorite section of the LinkedIn profile. My first one I love is the volunteer section. So I'll be very excited when we get to that. But the education section, if you list your education you have 11 times more chances of getting profile views. It is such a great area for you and actually for military veterans specifically because I'll share a little bit about my background and so it makes sense. But I was a logistics officer. I transitioned to marketing and communications and luckily during that pivot I did not have a lot of experience because I spent the last eight years in the military doing logistics. I did not have marketing and communications but what I did have, I had a degree in communications. So I optimized the education section to my benefit. I filled out the school information correctly. Remember we talked about making sure that you link the appropriate institution because LinkedIn is gonna use that link to make connections with other people in that network. You wanna list your degree, field of study. I actually just recently removed my start and end dates I think from my profile because I started to feel a little old and I don't know, you don't have to list it if you don't want to. But what I did do, I included my grade point average. If you have above a 3.5 you wanna list that grade point average. I think it says a lot about who you are. Now, if you have something below just leave it off. Nobody needs to know your activities and societies and then the description box is where I really leaned heavy into because I had the skill gaps because I had the experience gaps from being a logistics officer for so long. I listed, I went to my school's website I found the program details. I made sure to include them. I wanted to show that I had so much relevant education for the skill sets that I was trying to do. So I wanted to build credibility in the marketing and communications network and industry. And because of the lack of experience at the time I made sure to optimize the education section to really highlight my education in that field. And that's something I hope everyone goes back to their profile and does today. It's such a great opportunity. Now, like other sections of LinkedIn including your licenses and certification ensures that you will show up in more keyword searches. You wanna include all your licenses and certifications because it does help build specialized credibility in your area of expertise. But what you want to do or what you don't want to do is flood out or not look specialized. And what I mean by that is a lot of people will just put all of them on there and not realize that since you don't have the option of prioritizing or reordering your certifications sometimes you'll flush out the ones that are gonna build the credibility for you. So it's okay actually if you don't list all of your certifications or if you make as long as you make sure that the top three certifications in that section are really supporting you and emphasizing your credibility and specialty in your personal brand. So say you are freelance marketer and you're trying to get freelance work for companies to do marketing. You wanna make sure that your top certifications are relevant to marketing. Even though you might have a Lean Six Sigma black belt or something like that which was really hard to obtain and you feel so proud about it, you have to consider what certifications are going to build credibility for your personal brand. So just think that through and make sure that the top three are relevant to that. The next one we're gonna jump to is volunteering and did it go through? Oh, I'm sorry. The next one we're gonna do is skills and endorsements. So this is a great section. It's one of the newer LinkedIn sections and it's very useful. It instantly builds trust when you're building relationships. Now you only have 50 skills that you can list and I say only because you will be so surprised that how quickly those get used up. And the good thing about the skills section is you can reorder these which is great. So back to the point I was making with the licenses and certifications. You wanna make sure that the top three skills that are listed are relevant to your personal brand and build further building and reinforcing your personal brand. As people are going down through, when someone goes to your profile, they see that headline and you make a claim that you are the marketing guru or the project management guru. You wanna make sure that when they go to the about section that's confirmed, that's validated. They go to your education section that's reinforced there. Then you go down to your skills section. You wanna see project management or whatever skills are the most relevant and you wanna make sure that they're endorsed and linked to or associated to your experience. And what I mean by that is you see right here it says three experiences across international scientific advisors and one other company. You have the option to associate each skill with a job experience. And this is very, very important that you take, it's a little tedious because you have to sit there and make sure you're linking each one, but it's extremely important that you take the time, you invest that time to link it because it says a lot about you. It says, for example, program management right here is linked to international scientific advisors. By providing that information, you are telling the user that's viewing your profile. One, when's the last time you did program management? What industry were you doing program management in? How long were you doing program management? It gives so much information and builds so much credibility and really helps to tell your story, support your story and validate your story which is the whole point of optimizing each and every section of your profile. Let's go to the next section which is the one I was really trying to get to which is volunteering. I love volunteering. It's a bonus opportunity to showcase your talents, professional skills and in my case and in many other veterans who are transitioning or entrepreneurs who are trying to tap into a new industry. This is a great way to highlight experience even if it's unpaid. So same thing to capture is make sure you're highlighting the right institution so you're building the right network and getting recommended to the right connections, your role, the cause that you're supporting, your start and end date and again, take advantage of this description box and make sure that you are sharing as much as you can that is relevant to the personal brand you're trying to build. And so I talk about strategic volunteering a lot because it is what helped me to gain paid meaningful employment after leaving the military and ultimately those volunteer positions led to full-time employment. The full-time employment then led me to where I'm at now and starting my own company and running my own company. So I really emphasize that and let's go to the next section which is recommendations. So in addition to endorsements you wanna seek recommendations from your colleagues, your supervisors, clients and others on LinkedIn that have worked with you and are familiar with who you are as a leader. Recommendations, they are written statements by LinkedIn member vouching for the quality of your work. It gives you the option to review it and approve the recommendation and also if you write one you can always go back and edit it because your given recommendations are visible by others. What I like to recommend for this section is making sure that you are showing a 360 view of who you are as a leader. And what that means is you can request people to write recommendations for you and I recommend reaching out to one person that was a supervisor to you, one person that was a colleague, one person that you led, maybe a peer and try to create this full picture of who you are. And it really does help to build confidence in working with you. Say you're trying to gain more clients or employment seeking, this is just such a great way and I'm so happy LinkedIn added this feature. I even noticed that it has substituted for people doing referral call or reference calls. So definitely take the time, do not be ashamed to ask people for recommendations and make sure you're giving recommendations. There are times where people will see what you've written for other people and it's just another chance for people to see how well you write. Are you encouraging of others? Are you a team supporter? Do you support your supervisors? It really tells a lot about who you are and how you communicate with other people in your network. Okay, so we're getting closer to the end which is good because if we have time maybe I can sneak in some other tips. Well, I'll ask for Dan's permission but before I get to the last slide let's talk about additional section. So the ones we covered today are kind of your default sections. You wanna make sure that you at least optimize those sections, especially when you're building a personal brand or going to become a founder, CEO. You need to have that foundation. You need to have that and... But what you can do to strengthen your profile is click in your profile intro section. There is an add profile section and look at all these additional sections that you can have which is extremely important if you've written a book, you can add publications, you can add patents, projects you've completed, awards, additional languages which might be very relevant for what you're trying to pursue, organizations and causes. So consider your personal brand, what goals are you trying to accomplish and which sections are going to build the most credibility in your brand and in your efforts to expand your network and select it that way. So this concludes our presentation. If we have a few more minutes I do have other stuff I can throw in but I'll pass it over to you Dan and you let me know. Oh Dan, we can't hear you. How's that? We do have a question from Simply Money Habits Guru. Do you wanna come on to ask your question? Yeah, sorry, it's actually Sean, so. I like them both. I like Simply Money. Simple Money Habits Guru. Yeah, Cassie, thanks for being on at 3 a.m. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, so I was following along with my profile as you were going through this and I changed my right underneath the name. I've changed it to Entrepreneur, Founder, Financial Coach. My question was for Entrepreneur, do you think it's two cliches or not too professional to put some like Veteranure versus Entrepreneur, like a play on the word? I personally love saying Veteranure. It is, I would have said differently a year ago but now it's a common word. People understand what it means and I think it does build a lot of credibility and it shows your work ethic. Most people know Veterans are very hard workers. They're dependable. It speaks a lot about your character so I am pro-Vetrapreneur. Thank you, I'll definitely update that. I would also just put Simple Money right in your headline too. Simple Money Habits Guru is actually trademarked. I have that trademarked as what I do. Nice. That's awesome. Yeah. Sorry, I dropped my headpiece. No problem. Thank you so much. JR Lee on LinkedIn asks, should your banner reflect your aspirator field you wish to pursue? What do you think about? I've seen some people where they go like, they're a firefighter and they have a ton of firefighter imagery or something like that. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, Dan, I heard the second part. Can you repeat the question if you cut out? Okay, he's asking, should your banner image reflect your aspirations as far as the career field you're interested in pursuing or the business interests you're pursuing? 1,000%. If you can provide imagery, remember we talked about how our brains are hardwired to digest and digest imagery. Imagery speaks so much and really sets the tone. And what they say, picture tells a thousand words. You wanna have a picture. What I do recommend though for your banner, if you're gonna have a picture, and I've used pictures before too, I think they're really powerful to have, you want to use a program called canva.com. It's actually what I presented my slide deck on. You can get a free membership, upload the picture that you wanna use and try to lighten the imagery so that you also take advantage of that billboard space to have your name, your contact information and maybe have some text overlay on that picture. So, oh, there we go. Thank you. I see that you dropped the canva in there. That's what I would recommend. Have the picture faded out a little bit. Add more information about yourself on top of that picture. Casey, when you were talking about education, you said, what was it, 40 times more likely? What was it? What was the stat you said? Oh, man, you're gonna quote me. Let me go back. Hold on, let me, for so many, who gobs, but that's so important. There's a lot of folks who get out of the military, though, and they don't have the degree, but they might have some military schooling or they don't have a degree, but they have a certification. Do you have any advice for people who haven't finished the degree, but that's still an important piece for them? You can still list the degree if you have not completed it. If you go to my profile right now, I am working on a master's that I have not completed. It is on there and it shows that it's in progress and you want to list that. Unless you think sharing that much is going to hurt you because people will think maybe you don't have the bandwidth if you're earning a master's degree or working on education. If you think that might be an issue, that would be the only time I would not include it. Other than that, the more education, the better. Some employers, some clients, some people really value people who are lifelong learners who are pursuing professional, personal development. That also speaks to you as a person and the fact that you're still trying to grow. And if there are skill gaps, experience gaps, if there's any gaps and education can fill that, I would include it. This is such great information. I know I want to get back to your other tips. Someone had a great question here and it was about, I get these requests from all these people to be friends or to connect in some way. Can you speak to that part of it and also the part of it? What if you're asked by someone to connect someone to someone in your network? Do you have any rules? I mean, maybe it's not always a great idea to be the first person to connect anyone who comes to you with a CEO friend of yours or something like that. Do you have engagement advice for people on LinkedIn? Yeah, I would say one, you're gonna have a gut instinct. Listen to your gut instinct. If you feel, if you have a genuine connection with someone and you've been connected for a while and you feel comfortable vouching for this person, then go for it. But if for some reason you're having a, you don't have the best gut feeling on it, I would say try to get to know them first before you make the introduction. You vet them a little bit because if you burn out your connections, if you're constantly introducing people to the powerful network, the powerful connections you have in your network, you will burn out your network. So you wanna be helpful, but you can be helpful before you even introduce. So maybe by you hearing them out and talking to them before you make that connection, maybe that solves the problem and it doesn't even need to go any further than that. But I would say check your gut, test them out, build a relationship with them first. And once you have built that relationship and you feel confident in doing so, then extend the connection. How important do you think it is that you take the time when you are making one of those introductions? Like what do you need to be telling someone about that other person? Do you kind of have an obligation to do a little bit more than just kind of the surface? Me, Casey, Casey likes things you like. You guys talk kind of thing. I think this really depends on who you're introducing them to. If you are introducing them to someone who has very limited time, is a very busy person, you might really need to craft up a very solid introduction as to why you're making the introduction, why this would be a mutually beneficial introduction and you might have to put a little bit more work into the introduction. Now, if it's someone that it has more bandwidth and you know they have more bandwidth, maybe you don't have to create such a strong introduction and do some of that introductory legwork for them. They'll take the time to get to know them. So I would say judge it on the person that you're introducing them to and how much mental bandwidth that person you perceive that they have. Now, I know you as a military veteran yourself and as a spouse of another military veteran in your house, you know that veterans never have a hard time asking for help at all for any reason whatsoever. But do you have any advice for people who say, I know I have some great contacts out there and I need endorsements, but I'm just too embarrassed to ask someone or how do you put it, how do you get those and how do you get the people you know, is it am I being shameless when I ask for that? Not at all. People want to help veterans. There are so many people who volunteer so many hours a day helping veterans. And I would say though, before you ask for help, make sure that you have done some legwork yourself. So take your profile serious, make sure that you've optimized before, say for example, if you are looking for employment, don't just create your LinkedIn profile and post, I need a job. You need to do some backend work yourself and you need to strengthen your profile. You need to attend resources like this and events like this take advantage of people who've built their profile, build it up, make sure that you are putting in work. You're not just asking for everything to be handed to you. You want to show that you are dedicated, committed and people have that sense that you're not just asking for a handout, but that you've exhausted your efforts and that you need, now you need some reinforcements. That's great. Now for my personal LinkedIn page, a lot of people ask me about the photo and it's the same photo I put up when I was updating my MySpace page with my LinkedIn book several years ago. But seriously, I know a lot of people who they will, they'll have an account and they'll have a nice password and they'll lose their password. And then all of a sudden I'm getting a friend request by the same person I'm already friends with and I don't know if that person's a robot anymore, I don't know what's going on. Do you have any advice on how often you should update your LinkedIn and is it better to just cancel an account or do you have any advice for that? I have never heard of that happening, losing the account. I would say do exhaust all efforts to try to access your first account and don't duplicate accounts. Whereas I know that happens a lot over on Facebook, I don't think that is as common on LinkedIn. I think it's very easy to access the customer support and make sure you get to your original profile and stick with that one. LinkedIn is all about building your network. You do not wanna start over. Start with your original profile and then as far as the profile picture or updating any section on your profile, this is a live working snapshot of who you are. I update my LinkedIn profile. It's almost embarrassing to say this I update it every week almost. As things happen to me, as I gain different experiences or as life is shaping me, I make sure to capture that and update that. And I think it's easier to update your profile more often so that it's not just, every five years you have to kind of go in there and change everything and do this huge time investment to update all your job experience. You wanna update it as things are going. As something happens to me, I go to my profile. That's the first thing I do before I even call my husband and say, hey, I got a new job. I don't even tell him first. I go to my profile, I update it and then I ask him, did you see my LinkedIn profile? This is what's going on in my life. So update it as things are happening to you because people are following your journey. If you really build your network, people are following you. They wanna know what's going on with you professionally and it's a great way to keep your network up to date on what's going on with you. And that will lend more people joining your network because they're gonna see that update from you. They're gonna wanna connect, oh, congratulations on that new certificate. Congratulations are, you just wanna keep updating it. Great. For people like you see someone and you say, well, that person could do a lot for me in my life if we were friends and you decide to make a kind of one of those blind friend requests not that I've ever done that to Casey Valenti or anyone like that, but you're sending out this friend request. Is there a note or something? Is there something you should say on the note so that you're not just freaking someone out like, oh, there's a stranger asking to be friends? Yes, yes. I actually do have a very strong personal preference for this and everyone has different preferences. So I will speak to mine. Mine, if you're at this event now and you're wanting to connect, it makes sense to just send a connection request and just simply say, I was on the LinkedIn power hour today, a DAV, Patriot Bootcamp and just say that and then accept and build connections. And at least I know where you're coming from. I wanna know where you're coming from. It's not even just about filtering my network. I don't filter my network. Anyone who sends a connection request that has great intentions, I will accept, but I want to know where are you coming from? When I get a connection request, chances are I'm gonna go to your profile. I wanna know about who's the people in my network. I really value my network and the people I'm connecting with and building relationships. And then say there's not an event and you're not meeting me at this event, but you've met me and you've discovered me through the feed. Now that I think would require a little more thought. But for me personally, I wanna know more about you. Hey, I'm connecting because we are both veterans. I see that you started your own company. Like why, what was it about my profile that drew you to asking to connect with me? Because then that will let me know maybe I have something I wanna share back with you. Oh, that's so great. Next week I'm hosting this. You might find that interesting. It's a great way to create that dialogue. And if you're gonna connect, you might as well start building the relationship right then and there. LinkedIn's one social network and then there's the rest of them. And the rest of them aren't as professional, but they do reflect your reputation. They reflect who you are as a person. How cautious do you need to be if you wanna succeed on LinkedIn? And you also have a Facebook account that maybe is more personal. How much do you need to worry about that? I would say worry about that. Yeah, I've just heard so many, not with me, but I've heard so many stories of people trying to gain employment. And then when the employer goes to search, they look very professional in LinkedIn and then they are doing some off the wall stuff over on Instagram and it's not aligning with your brand. So you wanna make sure, one, if it's on the internet, even if it's private, people can still discover it. It's out there for good. Even if you take it down, it's out there for good. So not only what do you have now, but what you create in the future, keep it in mind that once you put it out there, it's always out there. And if you do have a public account on one of the other platforms, make sure that it's okay to show more of your personal side on those accounts. I think that's good. But just make sure that it's not so completely off-putting or so off your brand or off, say on LinkedIn, let's just do a crazy example. Say you are a dog lover, you have a grooming service and you are promoting that business on LinkedIn, but then on Instagram, you are anti-dogs and you are a cat lover. It just is confusing. It just doesn't make sense. So you wanna make sure that your brand is consistent across all social media platforms and what you stand for and the causes you support are not conflicting between the platforms, but it's okay to show a little bit less professional side of you on the other platforms. Great. AfterBeats Dance Fitness has a question for us. Sir, would you like to come on or ma'am? Sir, hi. How are you all? Great. Hi. Hello. I hope you're doing good there in South Korea. I've been listening in. My quick question, and thank you by the way, DAV for holding this. It's so amazing. So the question I have for you, please, is that I teach, as you can see, AfroBeats Dance Fitness, and I was in the Navy for five years. I was a corpsman, a raw Navy, and I'm also applying to medical school. So the tension that I have there is I teach a dance class, it's fun, it's health related, and I link it back to my goals to pursue a professional career as a MD, a physician, and applying to medical schools this summer. I'm having conflicts because on my LinkedIn page, it's very professional. I have my everything, my headshot, everything. I've set it up. I said, pre-med, I worked in the chemistry lab, but then I started this thing during the pandemic when all of the gyms were closed down and I was teaching outside to try and reconnect people and try and get people healthy during COVID and it just hasn't stopped. It's grown. My question to you is, so I don't ramble on, how do I still say true to my authentic West African origin infusing it with fitness to keep people healthy and also maintain a professional profile on LinkedIn to medical schools because my ultimate dream is medical school but I have this fitness thing that because when I got out, the stitches, the IVs, everything I did did not matter, nothing mattered. Everything I did went, did not matter. All the deployments, helping people, surgeries, none of it mattered. You had to start back over, right? So, sorry, that was the neighbor, sorry about that. So my question is to you, how do I maintain my authenticity also applied to these medical schools for a professional degree or should I close that side of who I am and still try to maintain this professional aspect of applying to medical school? What, how do I go? So to answer your question very bluntly is do not shut it off. Keep, you can combine both and I actually feel like I can really relate to this because I'm very passionate about doing yoga. Yeah. But I have this other side of me that is building a brand and so it is complicated. You're like, okay, wait, I want to talk about yoga on Instagram. I'm doing yoga videos and then I'll link them and it's okay to those mesh. Those mesh really, really well. It really does because it shows who you are and I think it shows that you are taking your mental health very serious and you're showing people in the medical profession an outlet for the stress. That is a very high stress job. And I think it would actually, yeah, it would benefit one, it shows that as a medical professional you are still taking care of your mental health. So if anything, you're building confidence and your ability to do your job in the medical profession because you take your mental health serious and but also it would help you build your business because you're showing professionals on LinkedIn how you manage your mental health. So I would try to tie your stories in to the fact that dance helps you maintain a strong mental health to pursue a profession in the medical industry. And I think tying those stories together can be done. And I recommend that you do try to tie those stories because it is a great story to tell and that you have an amazing story. You really need to tell it and share it and it can go together. Thank you so much. I appreciate that so much. And I just also want to say really quick so I let everybody else get in and chime in on this very beautiful golden nuggets that you're dropping is that I'm going to take your advice and you said get creative with one of those lines. And today this inspired me to make something to the effect of like, please you can help me refine this because I'm not good at this, but burnout beater or burnout medical professionals. I mean, you know, because I can't tell you like even last year we had a medical student commit suicide. And so it's like, how do we still take care of the people who need to be taking care of the same thing in the military? Suicide is on the rise. It's not even going down. How do we take care of the people who are taking care of everyone? So again, thank you so much for this. It's so much appreciated. And thank you for sharing and feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. I'm already thinking of ideas for you like strengthening the mind and the body. Ideas are already flowing. So reach out. I'll be there. I'll be there where it goes on. There's a story to tell. We just have to figure out how to tell it for you. Okay, sounds good. I'll connect soon. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thanks. Casey, we have a few minutes left. Do you have some more quick tips we can get to maybe? Sure, yes. Let me share. So this is actually something I don't usually share, have enough time. So I'm very excited. I'm gonna show you how to benchmark and monitor your social selling score. So one second. Okay, can you see my screen? The benchmark and monitor slide? Yep, we got it. Okay, I'm gonna drop a link in the chat. And I hope if you're calling in from a desktop, you should be able to do this activity with us. So this is your social selling score. And in a nutshell, social selling is a strategic method for people to connect and build relationships and improve your outreach through social networks. And this, okay, let me find the chat real quick. Sorry, I like so much opened. Here we go. I'm dropping this link. And like I said, if you are accessing this webinar or the slide event from your desktop, you should be able to click this link. And if you're logged in to LinkedIn, your social selling index score will come up. And now if you're just now creating your LinkedIn profile, you're just now starting to get out, you might get out on LinkedIn. You might not have that high of a social selling index score, but this is a great way for you to see where you're at right now. Kind of benchmark where your professional brand is at and maybe set some goals for yourself. Okay, so I'm gonna replay this webinar. I'm gonna take these, this advice and optimize each section of my profile. And I'm gonna check my social selling index in a month from now. And my goal is to get in that top 1%. And this is how you can monitor your progress as you start optimizing and as you start creating content on LinkedIn. This is always a great place to go back to to see how you're doing. And that's something, it's just black and white. How are you doing? Oh, I'm just reading the chat, top 14%. That's great. Yeah, if you wanna share where you're at, hey, drop it in the chat. I think we can all cheer each other on. And so let me go to the next one and Dan just be like, Casey, stop talking. And I will. So this one's a pretty obvious one, but it is like a pet peeve of mine. So I have to always put it in there, but please personalize your LinkedIn URL. It makes it easier to read. It minimizes potential typing mistakes. When you create your LinkedIn profile, they're not gonna do LinkedIn.com, first name, last name. They're gonna do, in most cases, they're not. It's gonna be your first name, last name, a bunch of characters and letters and numbers. And it's not pretty. And when you're building your personal brand, you want everything to be pretty. You want everything to be easy. You want people to be able to find you. If you list and link your LinkedIn.com, you don't want it to look wild. And the last thing was making sure that you have access to your LinkedIn premium account. And so I'm gonna drop another link in the chat and you can check on how to access LinkedIn. Oh, 2% Tom, I see that. Look at you. Okay, here's another link in the chat. Last I checked, you not only got a free LinkedIn premium account when you leave the military, but every time you PCS, which has been very helpful for me, I very really have had to pay for my LinkedIn premium subscription because we're moving all the time. And every time we PCS, I get another year. They may have changed this, but this is the link that you wanna save and check periodically. All right, and the last one, and I'll turn it back over to you, Dan, is once you do have that premium account, you, I highly recommend taking advantage of the LinkedIn learning. It's free learning if you have the subscription to the premium account and you can get videos on building and improving your profile and networking, maximizing LinkedIn as a professional tool. And this is actually how I learned how to do LinkedIn and optimize my profile. And it's how I've landed all of my jobs post-military. It's how I've built my business. So highly recommend going and checking out these courses too. Awesome. Casey, thank you so much. Thanks, Tom and everyone in the chat there. Wanna get to a couple of things real quick before we go here. Join us May 4th. May 4th, we're gonna have DAV Shark Tank. The three finalists from our February cohort will meet head to head to determine who will make, who will take home our prizes of non-dilutive capital. We will be joined by a very special guest and new friend of DAV, Patriot Bootcamp, Chef Robert Irvine of Food Networks Restaurant Impossible and author of the new book, Overcoming Impossible. He'll be joining us as a special guest judge. If you wanna get updates on opportunities related to entrepreneurship, Future Caffeine Connects for upcoming cohorts. Sign up for our newsletters at patriotbootcamp.org. Extremely grateful to our friends at MX for hosting our next cohort in beautifully high Utah next month. We're looking forward to getting out there. Our next cohort will be for new to DAV Patriot Bootcamp founders. The cohort after the one in MX in May and that will be held October 12th through 14 back here in the Cincinnati area. Registration for the October event will open in conjunction with DAV Shark Tank, which will once again be held on May 4th. Thanks, Casey. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll see you next time.