[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:00] Brad Johnson: We’ve got Joshua B. Lee here with us. Before we even do any intros, just so people know it’s worth sticking around, Josh, why don’t you just drop some LinkedIn knowledge on people because I know you could teach a masterclass when it comes to LinkedIn.

[00:00:13] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s do it, man. Just in case everyone’s like, “Alright, these two were done. I got to use the restroom,” and then just never come back. Right? All right. Let’s do it. All right, so everyone can see my screen. Let me open up here. I always love, it’s always great to start with a LinkedIn tip. So, let’s go into it. This is the biggest thing I think that pushed people away from LinkedIn, far than everything else. It’s the kind of messages we get, right? We get spammed 24/7 and I have to admit, I’ve probably done these in my past and I know you probably have as well. So, let’s kind of go over them just because they just need to be said, and let’s get the elephant out of the room at least to kick it off. So, I’m sure we’ve got this one. I mean, Brad’s wearing a blue shirt. I noticed we have blue shirts in common. You know, we’ve all gotten it like, “Oh my God, we should be friends. You got a blue shirt. I’m wearing a blue shirt. Let’s do this.” And we really didn’t plan that. We’ve got the next ones. Do you have 15 minutes to talk to a total stranger? The next is interested in Agile, Disruptive, blockchain blah, blah, blah, hashtag, hashtag, hashtag.

You know, there’s someone that’s just trying to hit whatever popular hashtag right now to be able to grab you. The next one, I run a team that can help you with whatever you do, because I have no clue. I’m just going through and randomly selecting people that I think might fit my avatar. We’ve got the, “I’m so busy networking. I don’t have time to write a note.” Now, Brad, I’m going to tell you, every time I get one of these, it’s just an automatic delete. If you don’t take two seconds out to even try and spam me, they just really be lazy. So, unless I know you, make sure you say something like, “Hey, I saw you on that podcast or I saw you on that live stream with Brad Johnson and I just want to reach out to connect.” So, you got to be able to put a message in there. Next is if you accept this, I will thank you with a non-stop sales pitch. Those are my favorite. As soon as you accept you get the next pitch. And then the one that we really want to be really good is someone you might actually know. So, everyone’s either received, I guarantee it, or done it and been victim of it. So, the better way to be able to do this, let’s just show everyone right now. A lot of you all probably know this guy. Gary Vee, right?

[00:02:14] Joshua B. Lee: If you look, he’s got almost 2 million followers. How are you going to get past the BS, spam, everything else that he’s doing to get someone like this to actually connect? Well, no matter who it is, you can actually go pass all the doorkeepers on LinkedIn. This is what I love, but you need to take the time out to do it. If you’re going to do that, what I want you to think about is when you’re on your mobile app, don’t hit that Connect Now button. Hit the More button. The More brings up another page that gives us this page right here. It allows us to a personalized invite. Again, we do not want to smash the Connect button because that sends a blank message out. Always, always, always send the personal message. I don’t care what it might be, personalize it. People connect with other people. It’s a human thing. Last, send that message like I said. As you see with mine and Gary, both had Freedom Fast Lane, branch out in Austin, and South by Southwest, love what you do on LinkedIn. Boom. It’s just a quick short message but within 48 hours, I was able to connect with him.

So, this is the one tip that I tell you, everyone above all else, if you’re reaching out to connect, make sure there’s a reason why. Don’t just do it just because we both have blue shirts. So, that’s where I got to be able to start us off, Brad.

[00:03:21] Brad Johnson: Awesome. Awesome stuff. So, I want to give a little bit of context of why this conversation is happening and how it came to be. Because I know we’re on live. I know, hey, people need value right now and if we don’t hit them with that, they’re not going to stick around.

[00:03:33] Joshua B. Lee: 100%.

[00:03:34] Brad Johnson: The Virtual Advisor Series for those of you that listen to my podcast, The Elite Advisor Blueprint, we serve independent financial advisors all over the country, and we bring experts like Josh on and say, hey, how can we help you take your practice to the next level? And as you see, Josh and I are both live from our bedrooms here in this new virtual world we all literally found ourselves in overnight. And so, the whole Virtual Advisor Series came to be. I said, “Hey, we’ve got this serious need out there.” There’s a bunch of financial advisors whose business model has been upended overnight, very brick-and-mortar business model as you know, Josh. Now it’s 100% virtual. So, I reached out to some experts that I knew and I said, “Hey, would you be willing to come on, donate some of your time, and just serve a bunch of advisors out there?” And you were kind enough to accept. Just so you know, I mean, this isn’t your first run at LinkedIn. So, maybe, who are some of the people that some of the financial advisors out there might know that you’ve served with kind of their LinkedIn strategy in the past?

[00:04:30] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. No worries. I mean, I’ve been blessed.

[00:04:32] Brad Johnson: Oh, wait a minute. One thing, so this is because I’m a rookie at this and we’re all experimenting together. So, if you happen to be watching in on Facebook, I know we’re live on Twitter. I’m not sure where all but anywhere that you want to invite into…

[00:04:45] Joshua B. Lee: Periscope.

[00:04:46] Brad Johnson: Periscope. Yes. I mean, we’re bringing it back, baby. So, if you’re out there and you want to share this, if you’ve got another advisor buddy, a friend that could serve to learn here from Josh, now’s the time to go down on Facebook. I know you started a watch party and this allows you to share it either with individuals, within groups that this can serve on your own page. Please go ahead and start that up and just throw it back in the chat that you started a watch party. So, the team can let me know. We’ll give you a little shout out here. So, with that, Josh, why don’t you give a little bit of your background, maybe some people you’ve served and some of the context of how you came to the spot that you’re at now?

[00:05:21] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah, no worries. So, my background, let’s go with that. It’s always a good way to be able to start and say why I even have the opportunity to sit on the other side of this with you, Brad. So, my background, I started my first company back in 2002. Prior to that, I was in the real estate of going to college, got my broker’s license, doing that whole thing, and had the opportunity to kind of get the online advertising space. One of my clients was one, it’s a company, really. Most people have even forgotten about it at this point in time. But they were fairly significant starting the whole social kickoff of online social aspects, which is Myspace, right? Myspace, most of you forgot about. So, I used to monetize. I had the opportunity to kind of come in and one of my first contracts was to monetize all of their traffic back then we did arbitrage which was buy low, sell high which in talking to financial advisors, they probably know more so about what that word means than a lot of people I talked to.

So, we would actually be able to take that traffic from Myspace, work for companies like Yahoo back then, and be able to make money on the margins. We would buy that traffic for less than a tenth of a penny and then sell to other traffic and other clicks, and other advertisers for anywhere from $5 to $100 so we make that money in the margin. Back then it was crazy, right? I mean, this is the Wild Wild West so we were doing a couple of million dollars a month in net revenue. It was insane. In my early 20s, I mean, that was a blessing and a curse. Amazing to be able to have that opportunity but at the same time, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s like I’m trying to build a business, trying to do this, and I made a lot of mistakes, but I made some good decisions as well. I built many different companies in that online space. And then about five years ago, I actually was running about 10 different companies and looking back, on the outside looking in, I had everything like multiple companies, not worry about money, wife, kids, house, cars, travel, all that kind of stuff, good-sized company and I was miserable. I was living a life that just wasn’t happy because everything was around the money aspect.

[00:07:23] Joshua B. Lee: I was 40 pounds heavier than I am now. Never been overweight in my life. My relationships were monetary and I have no vision about where I was going. I just knew where I was at and I’m sure financial advisors probably see people like that all the time. And I reset my life and walked away from everything, move back in with my parents at 36, and restart everything. And I kind of look back, I want to take the knowledge I did and what do I really want to do? How do I want to really connect? And that word, connect, was what really got me. I started playing around on LinkedIn and the biggest thing was most people didn’t understand the traffic versus actually engagement and someone want those big things. I mean, look, I’ve personally managed over $100 million in asset and my companies have done over 300 million. I’ve controlled over 35 trillion online impressions. And in all that time, I’m not sure if I actually helped anyone. So, that was the biggest transition for me is how do I actually help people actually connect and engage with their audience.

And LinkedIn was a platform, it still is today, that was underserved, underutilized. And we really went in there and started looking on how many people are going in there and just really not doing it right. How do we do this better? How do we actually teach marketers how to be human online? And that’s kind of where we started. We started kind of going through and working on my own profile and others and then we got access to amazing people, people that I, like you said, I used to read their books on how to start companies back in the day. Some people that you may or may not know, Dan Sullivan, John Maxwell, Joe Polish, the list goes on. I mean, we’ve got some other big names and there’s some people I can talk about, some people I can’t, but it’s been an honor being able to really help them on LinkedIn to educate, inspire, and draw in their audience so they never have to sell or spam them. And it really creates a huge opportunity in this world, Brad, like with COVID right now, whatever we thought was going to be after this is gone, is wiped clean. And where we plan for the next 20 years have been wiped clean. We had the opportunity to start now and that’s what I wanted.

[00:09:23] Joshua B. Lee: I wanted to be able to do something that I could stand in front of my kids and be proud of and really create change and make this world a better place working with amazing people like yourself as well to be able to do it better than what we were doing before.

[00:09:36] Brad Johnson: That’s awesome, man. Well, it speaks to…

[00:09:37] Joshua B. Lee: Hopefully, not too long-winded. They’re like…

[00:09:38] Brad Johnson: No, no, I love the background. It says a lot about I see that a lot people that had success like you very early on and then they start to figure out, “Hey, maybe that’s not what it’s all about. It’s not about the money. It’s about the relationships and the high value that you can bring to others.” So, let’s transition here and I’m going to throw this out for, okay, so obviously this goes without saying. We’re in such a new world, financial services doesn’t quite know how to keep up, and that includes compliance and suitability. So, I’m just going to probably spam this throughout everything. If you’re an advisor out there, whether you’re an RIA, broker, dealer, independent insurance advisor, you all live in different regulatory bodies. And every single, I mean, I’ve probably seen 100 different BDs with 100 different compliance guidelines. So, before you take any of what Josh is about to share, step number one, start with compliance and suitability because we want to make sure, obviously, anything we’re sharing here does not ever come back to haunt you. And right now, social media, the virtual world we’re all talking about and the reason we’re doing this is because nobody’s got it figured out.

So, start with compliance and suitability first, before you run with any of this. So, we’ll probably say that a few more times, Josh. So, also one other thing that goes without saying. Because we are live and because Josh gave us his time, I can take live questions and comments. So, feed those into whatever social platform you’re on. My team’s monitoring them and bring in kind of the best questions over on my side. And as they fit in context, I’ll feed them to Josh as well.

[00:11:05] Joshua B. Lee: Hey. All the ones that don’t qualify as the best questions, I’ll go back in and answer them for you so don’t worry about it. Whatever the best questions are, we’re going to answer them. I’m like, well, 100%. I’m going to go back. I promise everyone, ask as many questions as you want. I promise I will go back in and answer everyone.

[00:11:22] Brad Johnson: Well, and the other thing too, Josh, and we’re going to get to kind of three core ideas here. You’ve been super kind. You’ve actually gifted us PDFs and frameworks that you use with your clients that pay you a lot of money to do that work. You said, “Hey, I’m here to serve during this time.” So, my team’s going to be dropping those in the private Facebook recreated for this community, The Virtual Advisor, basically search for that on Facebook. TheVirtualAdvisorSeries.com if you just want to go there and get access to everything that Josh is talking about. Team is going to drop in there as he covers it. So, if you want it immediately, don’t wait around. Just go there right now. So, with that, Josh…

[00:11:55] Joshua B. Lee: Another cool thing is, Brad, you let me in the group too. So, if they join the group and they have a question for me directly, they can ask me in that group too, while they’re getting this PDF, so that’s even, you know, I’m excited. You’re like, “Josh, you jump in the group and add value in there,” and I was like, of course, 100%. So, excited about that too.

[00:12:13] Brad Johnson: I appreciate that, man, and because I know your time is very valuable. So, don’t take this for granted you all. I mean, you heard the names that he literally just dropped there. Those are big-time performers. And so, you’re getting some insider access that most people don’t literally get unless they pay Josh a pretty hefty sum to do it. So, with that, you hit three key frameworks. How we got introduced was a Zoom like this in Jon Vroman’s family, basically, the Front Row Dads group. And literally within five minutes, I’m like, I’ve been on LinkedIn for a decade and Josh just blew my mind. So, let’s get to that stuff.

[00:12:45] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s do it, man.

[00:12:47] Brad Johnson: Where do you want to start? Profile, SSI? Where do you want to go with this?

[00:12:51] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s go in, man. I mean, this is to get everything started, right? I mean, it really starts with your profile because I think that’s the biggest thing. So many people like before we go in, I want to kind of just ask a question in the group and I want everyone to start commenting. Well, as soon as you kind of which way you go, like, are you on LinkedIn? Are you actively using it? So, comment either on or actively or active because that’s the biggest thing. Because so many who are like, “Well, I’ve got LinkedIn,” like, “Well, cool. What do you do?” “Well, I kind of look at it occasionally.” Or there’s other people that are super active on it, and they’re still not getting those opportunities. So, that’s the real thing. I want to be able to see is like because I see so many times like when I ask that question, maybe two out of 100 people raise their hands on actually using it. So, that’s a huge thing and that’s why we want to start off with talking about the profile because that’s the tip of your spear. What we do to educate, inspire, and draw an audience is rather than having a seller or pitch them to be able to get in, get an LTV, a lifetime value, and a client that goes through the roof when they choose to be part of working with you.

You want to make sure that your profile is set up because, Brad, dude, I think you and I talked about it but about three years ago, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $24.6 billion cash. I mean, their largest cash purchase ever and they’ve had a massive return. They’re integrating in everything. So, if you think that your profile you set up is not up to date, guess what? It’s going across Outlook. It’s going across Skype. It’s going across Word. It’s going across Excel, all their different properties. They just buy the platform to, you know, really, other than really leverage that information that’s on there for everyone across the Microsoft products and services. So, let’s start there, man. Let’s start talking about that profile.

[00:14:35] Brad Johnson: Yeah. I don’t want to steal your thunder, but financial advisors are all about demographics when it comes to marketing and you dropped some serious knowledge as far as the demographics on LinkedIn compared to Facebook. So, that might be something…

[00:14:48] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s do that, man. I mean, hey, it’s your show. I’m sorry. You guide me, man. That’s what I’m here to be able to answer the question. So, yeah, demographics. So, this is an interesting part. I mean, when you talk about demographics, one of those big things that I see is everyone’s like, “Well, all my clients are on Facebook. Why? Why do you believe it? It’s because that’s what you’ve heard everyone else say?” And it’s such a misnomer. Yes, there’s a lot of people on Facebook but know your audience. Like me, I work with a lot of people that I have high-end products or services. A lot of my clients have reoccurring products or services that range anywhere from $5,000 a month to $50,000 a month. And based on disposable income, those clients are always on Facebook. So, when you talk about income-wise, average incomes on Twitter, you’re looking at around $48,000 a year. On Facebook, it’s about $64,000 a year.

The amazing thing like this is where now before I get into it, let’s see who comments, let’s see the different guesses. Now, I can’t see it but I always love to kind of go back and look at it like, okay, I just gave you those two numbers, 48 and 64, right? So, comment below and give us your best guess. And if you can hit it dead on, maybe I’ll do something special. I’ll think about what I can do to be able to add in more value.

[00:16:10] Brad Johnson: If my team wants to feed a few of those guesses in, I’ll read them off here as they come in. So, the question is what is the average annual income of a LinkedIn user?

[00:16:22] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. So, here’s the answer. Okay. Now, we gave everyone a little bit of time so let’s see. I mean, even if you’re not watching it live, I still want to kind of go back in. The average income right now. Now, let’s be real. This is pre-COVID but I don’t think it’s changed. I think it’s actually gone up because more people have went to other social channels and the real users that aren’t trying to spam or anything like that are actually staying on LinkedIn, that are looking to be able to add those values.

[00:16:48] Brad Johnson: So, Lyn says 100K. Patty says 120. Matthew 65. Patty revised hers to 150. Christian 150. So, anybody close, 85. We’re getting a few more.

[00:17:03] Joshua B. Lee: 120. So, it’s 118 and see change. So, that’s the average. I mean, there’s never, you know, I’m giving rounded numbers, but it’s like 118,695 or something like that.

[00:17:15] Brad Johnson: But does it count if Patty was the closest, but she had four different numbers? Is that a win?

[00:17:21] Joshua B. Lee: I mean, hey, that’s the way to play the numbers, right? Like, well, everyone’s given one guess. Patty’s like, “I’m going to guess a whole bunch. I mean, at least one’s got to hit, right?” It’s like playing the lottery. The more tickets you buy them, the better your odds are of either losing your money or actually winning. So, that’s awesome. So, I mean, that’s the biggest thing, right? We want to be able to work with people that have a higher disposable income now more than ever because if they’re going to be able to afford it, they need to be able to have that disposable income to be able to afford what you offer. So, that’s why I love LinkedIn because not only that, your average, more than 50% or more of the people on LinkedIn have a college degree or higher. So, you have an educated audience and you have an audience that has a higher disposable income than other platforms.

[00:18:07] Brad Johnson: Pretty good start.

[00:18:08] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. I mean, that’s one reason so, yeah.

[00:18:12] Brad Johnson: And in our space, obviously, a lot of advisors are trying to climb that investable asset ladder so that obviously aligns really well there. Maybe we go here. Obviously, you look at Facebook, that’s probably more B2C and I would assume you’ve got some opportunity for B2B a little bit more on LinkedIn that people…

[00:18:29] Joshua B. Lee: Well, you know my thing, right? There is no B2B or B2C. There’s only H2H, human to human, because every company is run by another human being. I’ll be honest, Brad, I mean, B2B and B2C were developed by marketers like me years ago to diversify ad spend. That’s truly a lot of what it was. I get it, we go through but everything, a company is not run by a company. It’s run by other human beings. You’re always speaking to another human. So, you’re right. There are different demographics that go on there. I mean, people are going on Facebook. I mean, there’s a huge opportunity there but they really go on Facebook to be able to, for the most part, lose themselves in someone else’s life, to be able to kind of step out of their own and step into someone else’s. LinkedIn what we see is people are going there to be able to you could get information to make a decision or to educate themselves on making a decision. You’re looking at when you look at 45% of all social media traffic to your homepage, comes from LinkedIn.

When you’re talking about all the different social media is when 45% of all that traffic to your homepage from social media is coming from LinkedIn, that makes me pause and go, “Oh, wow, do I have the right link set up? Do I have my company page set? Do I have my personal page set up? Because that’s where people are doing the research. Most people do all the research well before they ever talk to you to make a decision, a buying decision.

[00:19:54] Brad Johnson: So, we chatted before this just to make sure, number one, we’d share value here that was going to hit home for advisors out there. And by the way, if you’re just joining us, if you happen to be on Facebook and you’ve got advisors out there, buddies you met at a conference, somebody that you haven’t seen for 10 years, but you think is trying to navigate this virtual world right along with the rest of us, please start a watch party, share it with them. I think you can even put their own name in the profile, send them a message. There’s all kinds of ways. So, Josh, I think, even as you’re explaining to me the difference between live streaming, which we’re doing right now. So, we’re on Facebook. LinkedIn has a different approach to live streaming, which speaks to kind of the high value and what the content they’re trying to put on the platform. Can you share that? Because I think I had no clue and I think most financial advisors out there don’t know how that works.

[00:20:40] Joshua B. Lee: Look, right now, we’re all at home. We have a little bit more time on our hands to try and figure out what to do and, I mean, everyone becomes an expert at this point, right? And that’s with Facebook, we go on. There’s so much additional noise. Everyone with a phone or camera is taking it out and going, “Well, I’m going to tell everyone what I think and what’s going on.” And I mean, it’s hard. I mean, look, most of my friends are doing it. They are in this world where they actually connect and engage. And they are amazing educators in the space of online traffic and online media, but there’s just so many others and LinkedIn really wanted to be different, right? They’re all about not how much you spend, but how much you can engage with your audience and what value you bring to the platform. So, just like we talked, you’ve got to be able to get approved to get at LinkedIn Live, and they’re very, very selective on what they’re going in. So, if you do get access to that, they want to make sure the information and the person and all that is very curious. And that’s what I really appreciate about that. I mean, it’s amazing what you’re getting access to.

So, the fastest way to get access to LinkedIn Live right now is you had your own partners. You have some kind of where you’ve been live. You’ve been doing shows, whatever it might be, YouTube channel, things like that, to be able to show them that you know what you’re doing and know what you’re talking about. So, if you don’t have that, you’re going to be waitlisted for a long time. Now, they are making changes and we’ll see how this all plays out. It was supposed to be in a quarter. And then as I said, when we started, everything’s different, everything is new. By end of quarter, everyone was supposed to have access to LinkedIn live via their company page. So, not everyone could see it. Only people that follow your LinkedIn company page, you could actually LinkedIn Live to. The reason why they do that is, one, it separates out the context. They have a whole bunch of videos. And, two, let’s just be real, every company does want to make money and that’s the only place that you can actually do advertising just like on Facebook. So, I’m not sure where that is on release, but that will be coming up. But if you want to personally have LinkedIn Live to your entire audience as a human-to-human, as person-to-person, you’re going to have to submit for access, Brad.

[00:22:44] Brad Johnson: Cool. Thanks for hitting that. So, we’ve got three things we haven’t even really got to yet so let’s pull those up. And, by the way, I’ve got a team that is pulling questions so live viewer questions right now. So, if you have them as we go, feed them into that chat and, Josh, sounds like he’s going to go back and answer all of these after the fact and he’s going to be in the private Facebook group. So, if you are not a part of the Virtual Advisor Facebook Group yet, go in there. Not only is Josh going to share all this stuff for free as far as these PDFs we’re talking about, but he’s also going to answer some questions live as he’s already in the group. So, do we want to go to rocking your profile? Do we want to go to SSI?

[00:23:18] Joshua B. Lee: Sure, man.

[00:23:19] Brad Johnson: Which one makes more sense?

[00:23:20] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s talk SSI first. I know we’re kind of going there and I really want to kind of bring that out. So, this is something that a lot of people don’t know and I would like to ask to who here that’s watching right now or watching later, whatever it might be, whenever you get to this point, who’s heard of this Social Selling Index Score on LinkedIn? So, just comment yes or no, because I mean, look, I’m giving you a lot of information. This helps me as well too. The more people that I get to know and I get to see, you’re talking about statistics. I want to know who knows about it and who doesn’t. So, it’s not just for that. You’re helping me help you. So, please comment. Let me know if you’ve ever heard of this because it’s really, really important. I mean, Brad, when you and I talked, I don’t think that you have heard of it either.

[00:24:02] Brad Johnson: No. I think it was 0% on a group of probably 20 entrepreneurs that you’re doing a private call with.

[00:24:09] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah.

[00:24:10] Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, if you can just throw a yes or no, SSI is – now what’s the actual acronym stand for?

[00:24:15] Joshua B. Lee: Social Selling Index Score.

[00:24:17] Brad Johnson: So, do you know what Social Selling Index Score is on LinkedIn? Yes? No? Feed it into the chat and my team will just spam some yeses or nos in here so we kind of get some context. But I’m going to be really surprised. It’s going to be some rock star advisors, I think, or some very…

[00:24:32] Joshua B. Lee: I mean, heck, believe me, Brad, I run across all the time. I run across “LinkedIn experts” because they took the course and I’ll ask them and they don’t know. So, this kind of separates people out because LinkedIn’s algorithm is built around this. We spent years on Facebook, getting all these likes to our pages, and now we actually have to pay to get in front of them. Well, organic reach on LinkedIn is like Facebook 2008. It’s amazing but you have to be able to get within the algorithm and this is what it’s based around. It helps you be able to get a good score and be able to help you identify if you’re doing the right things at LinkedIn once. They will reward you for actually engaging and connecting to your audience. So, that’s what we want to be able to do. So, let me share the screen.

[00:25:15] Brad Johnson: All right. So, as you’re sharing, so far, we’re 100% on nos. So, Josh says no, Christian says no, Drew says no. So, yeah, I haven’t got a yes yet. We’ll see. Maybe one will come through here. Logan said…

[00:25:26] Joshua B. Lee: Do you see my screen?

[00:25:27] Brad Johnson: Yeah. You’re good.

[00:25:28] Joshua B. Lee: All right. So, if you haven’t heard of it, two ways to go do it. I mean, you can go to StandOutAuthority.com/SSI to be able to pull your score or, look, I’m just 100% real. Go to Google. Type in SSI LinkedIn. You have to be logged in your LinkedIn and you can pull your score up. So, while I’m showing this, if you want to be able to do that, I would love that. Pull up your SSI score and then let’s start seeing everyone’s scores too, because it’s zero out of 100.

[00:25:51] Brad Johnson: Yeah. Please post your score in the chat. We did get one yes. So, Matthew says yes. So, he did know what SSI is.

[00:26:00] Brad Johnson:  There we go. So, because what I’m going to do is once we go through this, I’m going to show everyone. That’s what the PDF is that I gave Brad and his team on how to be able to take your score to where it needs to be to get maximum organic reach. So, let’s go into how your score is based out, right? So, one of it is about establishing your personal brand. The next is finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. So, your score is broken into four different parts. What you want to kind of think about is what are you doing? How are you actually doing these things? Are you finding people that you connect with or you just connect with everyone? Are you engaging on post? Are you actually sharing about your company? These are things that are really, really important. Now, your score that comes in, here’s the different what we’ve seen historically, that if you’ve got a score of 30, and below, it’s kind of like your SAT test, right? If they give you 300 points for putting your name on it. Yay. So, I’m not trying to be condescending to anyone but if you get a zero to 30, you put your name on it.

Good job. You’re probably not doing much. That’s one of those people, right? Remember I asked in the beginning, are you active on LinkedIn? Or do you just have a LinkedIn? That’s a huge distinction on using the platform. Now, if you’re a 32, let’s say 65 and you’re someone that’s kind of you look at LinkedIn, occasionally, you’re reading a lot of people’s posts, but that’s about it. You’re not really doing much of your own. Now, what LinkedIn looks for is 70 and above. These are what they consider leaders. These are people that are doing that are establishing the personal brand. They’re connecting with the right people, they’re engaging on other people’s comments, and they’re building strong quality relationships. And when they see that, that puts you within the LinkedIn algorithm and they go, this person’s doing what we want. They’re adding value to the platform. They’re adding value to others. Let’s reward them by showing their content and their profile to more people. And the more people that we get and put in front of, the more opportunity that comes our way.

[00:27:54] Brad Johnson: So, Josh, a few questions for you there and we’ve got some scores coming in. So, Drew’s at a 47. Josh is at a 52. You’ve worked with some big names that have big platforms, whether it’s coaching platforms, authors, does that really matter? Have you had some big names that were like 30s and 40s on there because they just weren’t active? I mean, what’s the consensus there?

[00:28:12] Joshua B. Lee: Look, when I started with, I mean, let’s just talk Dan Sullivan, Strategic Coach, right? He didn’t even have a profile when we started. So, we had a zero. I mean, it happens all the time. So, you want to talk about fresh out the boat. I mean, Dan is an amazing Strategic Coach in posting, but they didn’t have him as a personal profile. I mean, it’s so important. It’s not just your company brand. It’s you as a person. People connect and buy from other people. Brands are great, but it’s the people behind them that drive the force. That’s what people want. They want that connection, especially now more than ever, in this digital world, that we’re all really having to just be slammed in front of, we need to be more human online, so they want to connect with another human being. So, yeah, we’ve had many different people from random, different scores. We’ve had people that tried to game the system and got a good score, but they weren’t getting the opportunity on the other side because it was the content they are putting out. Or it was just different pieces like that. So, it really is important not just to be able to be talking about yourself, and we can touch on how to even approach too a little bit as well.

[00:29:18] Brad Johnson: Yeah, so a couple of questions. We’ve got a few more scores coming in so Christian’s a 46, Dan’s a 66. Nice. Dan’s in the UK, by the way, so we’re live in the UK, worldwide, pit bull style, right?

[00:29:34] Joshua B. Lee: You could tell we’ve been locked in the house for a couple of weeks.

[00:29:38] Brad Johnson: My bad jokes are funny now if you’re locked away long enough. How long does it take before progress is seen? And I know you’re going to get into a framework of posting here in a second but can you see results pretty quick as far as that score?

[00:29:50] Joshua B. Lee: You can see results fairly quickly. And if you start doing what I’ve done the PDF that I’m sharing the group and you can get your score 70 above under 30 days or less.

[00:29:59] Brad Johnson: Wow. By doing that, now your content’s rising to the top?

[00:30:03] Joshua B. Lee: Right. And that’s what we want to be able to do because now you’ll show up, not even your content, but your profile gets searched and you start showing up for more search results. And that’s why next we’re going to go to the profile because that’s important. If you start doing this, bring your SSI score up and start showing up on more LinkedIn search results and getting people looking at your content and your profile is outdated or not put together correctly, you’re just missing out on an opportunity. So, why would you ever do that? That’s why it’s so important to be able to, first and foremost, outside of all this making sure your profile with any client, I took on a client today and I said, “All right, cool. Give back. We gave them all the different things when your profile and company provided done. We’ll start because, well, I want to start now. If we get you going right now, everything that we drive to you, is this going to be lost? I hate to waste time. Time is the only thing that we don’t have. It’s not a renewable resource. It’s the only thing we can’t get back.

[00:30:57] Brad Johnson: Makes sense. I mean, you don’t want to send traffic to somewhere where there’s like, “No thanks. See you later.”

[00:31:03] Joshua B. Lee: So, it’s like sending a broken link like a 404 page and you’re like, “Wow. I just spent a whole bunch of money and that did nothing because I didn’t take all the necessary steps.” So, just make sure the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted.”

[00:31:15] Brad Johnson: Cool. So, anything else on SSI before we move on?

[00:31:19] Joshua B. Lee: That’s the basics of it.

[00:31:21] Brad Johnson: I want to get to your post framework because I think that’s really, I mean, it’s fairly simple.

[00:31:26] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. We could definitely talk about that but, again, let’s talk about the profile because everyone’s going to go. They’re going to start posting and if they don’t, you just heard me say it time and time again, I mean, make sure your profile is on point. Now, we’ve got to rock your profile PDF that I gave you that your team’s going to share within the group. So, again, everyone, if you’re not in the group, make sure you join that group. You could get access to that PDF because I’m trying to make sure that I help everyone right now as much as possible so we can all rise up together. As an entrepreneur, I need to be able to help other amazing entrepreneurs like yourself, so we can all be able to, the more I help you all, be able to really add value to the platform, the better we all rise up, the better we all do, and it gets rid of the people that are not doing the right thing. So, let’s go on a profile first, Brad, if you don’t mind.

[00:32:08] Brad Johnson: Perfect. Yeah, go for it.

[00:32:10] Joshua B. Lee: And then I’ll share mine, right? I’ll use mine as I want to use yours. He’s mine as…

[00:32:15] Brad Johnson: Hey, don’t make fun of me live in front of an audience here. Let’s go back to you.

[00:32:21] Joshua B. Lee: So, let’s go through the different basics, right? So, when you’re looking at your profile, here’s my profile. And remember, if anyone reaches out to be able to connect with me on LinkedIn, we talked about right at the beginning, make sure you send a message, “Hey, I saw you on Brad Johnson’s podcast, live stream, whatever it might be, video, and this is the value I got. I love to connect with you. If you do that, I promise you, I’m going to connect with you and I share a ton of free stuff there too.” So, first and foremost, I want you all to look at this, picture, right? We’ve got a basic picture. It’s me, white background. It’s not me at the beach. I think Tinder you’re always supposed to have a fish or you’re supposed to have an animal but it’s not Instagram where I’m riding a roller coaster. It is a professional platform but you don’t see me just like right now, I’m not wearing suit and tie. I’m not going to wear a suit. I mean, look, I want people to know who I am. I want to draw on my right audience and I want to repel the audience that is not my right audience.

So, take a picture on a solid white background and wear what you normally would wear, what you want to wear every day to be able to connect with your customers that they’re going to be okay with who you are. Cool? Picture. Next.

[00:33:32] Brad Johnson: By the way, Josh, because I know we’re in an instant gratification society right now especially when we’ve been locked in our home for a month straight, if you’re watching this live anywhere, you go into the private Facebook group. So, if you go to The Virtual Advisor, just search for that on Facebook or the website. It’s actually TheVirtualAdvisorSeries.com, my team is literally sharing these as we are live here. So, they’re available. They should be available right in the chat and the live stream and links to getting all of this.

[00:34:00] Joshua B. Lee: Now, don’t just jump off and go get that PDF because I’m going to share a little bit more than what’s even on the PDF so I need for you to listen in.

[00:34:09] Brad Johnson: I’m not trying to redirect your traffic here, by the way, either. Yeah. Stay here for sure.

[00:34:12] Joshua B. Lee: Stay here. Stay on point but make sure we get that seven. That’s awesome that a team’s doing that. So, when you’re looking at profile, we talked about picture. Next thing you want to make sure to do is put something up here like talking about what you do like you’ve only got my logo down here a little bit but I’m talking about I do engage in marketing. I do it on LinkedIn. I track, influence, convert, and grow. Have something that represents you. This is the second thing that people can see when they actually go to your profile. Now, if they’re searching for you, I want you to look. Now, mine says this, “I help X to achieve Y so they can do Z.” A strong headline, the first steps in result-driven LinkedIn influence marketing. This is so important. Most of you will put coach, financial advisor, business owner, sales rep, whatever it is. Look, guys, it’s down here. I can go down here and see my experience. I can see, oh, I’m a CEO and founder of Stand Out Authority. Don’t waste that space. This is the time to be able to really put your audience in and be customer-facing forward.

I help X. Who do you help? Identify your audience so they can self-identify yes or no that they’re you like, “Oh my God, that’s me,” to achieve Y. This is what you do. This is what your service does to help them achieve. And so, they can do Z is why they buy. They don’t buy your service for your service. They buy your service or they hire you based on the outcome they receive from your service. So, that’s what I want you to think about when you put your headline. I help X, let’s say it’s entrepreneurs. To achieve Y, to achieve influencer status. So, they can, you know, what? Help change the world. Make more money. There’s multiple different things but think about that as you go in. That’s really, really important you doing the headline. Make sense?

[00:35:59] Brad Johnson: Love it. It’s simple. I mean, if you’re on here, you can literally go do this in five minutes if you put a little thought to it.

[00:36:06] Joshua B. Lee: Then do it. Try it out. If you go in and make a statement, do your headline, you post in the comments below, I’ll make sure if I don’t see them, I’ll make sure Brad’s team gets to you and I’ll give you my thought on it. This is what we’re here for. I mean, I told Brad I’m here. I’m all in. So, I’m all in. We’re here to help you out. So, if you want to be in, give me your I help X to achieve Y so they can do Z headline. I will go in and look at it. I’ll give you my thoughts on.

[00:36:32] Brad Johnson: Appreciate it.

[00:36:32] Joshua B. Lee: So, as we move on from there and this is how you change. Everyone, see these little pencils? This is where you kind of go in. We want to make sure we’re doing these things. Next, what’s really important is your About section. LinkedIn is not a resume. Let me stop and say it again. LinkedIn is not a resume. This is a place for people to be able to connect. It used to be. Now, if you’re looking for a job, yes, it can be a resume, but if you’re looking to be able to get hired for your services, remember, I said people connect. I start off I tell them what I do, my Y. There’s no B2B or B2C. There’s only H2H, human to human connection, as every company’s run by another human being. You all heard me say that in the beginning. I stand by that. We have forgotten how to connect and engage in the digital age of automation. LinkedIn hates automation. So, if you try and use automation, you are risking your account of getting booted. So, I’m allowing people to understand who I am first, a little bit about my background, a little bit of what my company does, but I’ve got a company section to be able to say that, and then give them a little bit more.

Talk about my book, author of Balance Is Bullsh*t, and why I believe this. Father of two. I want people to go, “Man, I resonate with that person,” and then people want to go, “I want to connect with Josh. Man, how do I, oh, here’s his contact information.” If they had to click again, we’ve potentially lost that person. So, put it right there. Hey, put a call to action, put an email. Here’s an amazing trick right here. That phone number, it’s a Google Voice number. I’m giving my secret away live right here. I rarely tell anyone this but, look, it gives the perception that you can call me directly, but it will go directly to a voicemail that we check. But people want to be able to have. People read. Some people read, some people listen to audiobooks, some people watch YouTube to have ways of interpreting information. Other people, it’s the same with how they want to connect with you. Give them multiple ways to be able to connect with you because we don’t want any resistance. The path of least resistance is opportunity. So, we want to be able to do that.

[00:38:31] Joshua B. Lee: I mean, I’ve even got a link in here if you ever grab 15 minutes with me anytime that someone wants to be able to do that. So, make sure this go in. Next, make sure you have different rich media. Again, you can add it right here. I’ve got testimonials. I want people to connect with me. I want them to hear someone else talking about. I want them to hear my voice. So, after we’re done, I’m probably going to ask Brad for a copy of this and I’m going to post it on here because I want everyone to be able to go in and listen what’s going on. I have different things around my book, old pictures. We’ve got all kinds of different things. That’s what I want people to be able to do because what we’re trying to do is get profile views, post views, search appearances. That’s where opportunity comes. And then you can go in here and add your experience. You go in My Experience, I’ve got more than five. It’ll keep on going and keep on going. It goes all the way back to when I used to work at Chili’s back in high school because guess what, that’s human connection. Someone go, “Oh, my God, you worked at Chili’s? Dude, I did too,” and that’s an opportunity for connection.

I say this is my door to the couch mentality. You know, Brad, we’ve all heard that whole, “Sell me a pen,” right? This is sales training 101, “Hey, sell me this pen.” If I knocked on your door, and I was like, “Hey, my name is Joshua B. Lee and I’m here to be able to sell you this.” You’re closing the door before you even have half of that out of my mouth. But if we’re sitting on the couch, we’re hanging out, there’s some kind of emotional connection where there’s a reason. We know each other for some reason. We’d say, “Oh, wow, I relate to him,” and I’m like, “Brad, check out this pen.” I don’t have to do much more than that. You’re going to take that pen and look at it because we’ve got the connection. So, fill out your profile as much as possible. Make sure you have your full experience, your schools, any certificates, volunteer experience. Look, every month for the last six years except for recently during COVID, I go to Dell Children’s Hospital and dressed as Spiderman for the kids. These are things that I share. People go wild with it. Most don’t even think to put that on their profile because they’re like, “Oh, that’s a business profile.” No. I want to know everything about you. Take that time out.

[00:40:30] Joshua B. Lee: Same thing with your skills, everyone. These are the skills. They’re amazing. If the skills that you have on your LinkedIn profile are not what you want, hit that little arrow. Change it. You probably got endorsed by other things. You can move whatever top three you want to the top. Let’s say it’s not even there. You think when I started, they have LinkedIn marketing as a skill when I started this new years ago? No. I added my own skill. And then I got my endorsements for it. So, what you do, you have not already been endorsed for, but that’s what you want to be known for. Add your own skill. Put it at the top. Top three are where people look at. Recommendations, you can ask for five a day. Make sure you do this because, look, maybe one out of every five people might do a recommendation. These stand the test of time. If you go back to all mine, they go back all the way to 2004. Brad, I mean, you’ve been running this for longer. How many times have you ever had someone reach out to you and go, “Hey, Brad, man,” like someone you know or something, “Hey, I’m going for a new job, man. And I put you down as a reference and just expect a phone call and say I’m an amazing person.”

It happens, right? I mean, well, you’re like, “Yeah, fine.” I mean, there’s not one way or another but you don’t have a bad ill will about that person. So, you’re like cool because once they get the phone call I can say and it’s done. Out of sight, out of mind. LinkedIn recommendations last the test of time. Go in there. Go reach back out to. They can go in and go, “Wow, man, back in 2004 people were still liking Josh. They haven’t yet been like, “Oh, screw this guy.” So, yeah, that’s what we want to be able to see that you’ve been able to help people throughout the years.

[00:42:05] Brad Johnson: So, I’m going to step in here real quick, Josh, because this is once again, I told you, I’m going to spam this a little bit. So, we’re so new or I should say Financial Services is so far behind when it comes to technology. A lot of the suitability and compliance has not caught up. So once again, on some of the recommendations on the posting on the profile, you’re with a BD, you’re with an RIA, you start there before you do anything on LinkedIn. So, I just want to say that because everything that Josh is sharing here is gold and it’s quite universal. The issue is sometimes in our space, there are things you can and cannot do. So, once again, I want to say that again, before you do anything, update the profile, send out messages. I know even in our space, we’ve got Smarsh that archives all of your social posts. So, just make sure everything you’re doing fits into those guidelines, run it by your compliance and suitability officers first, then do the stuff that Josh is telling you or at least the stuff that you’re allowed to do that Josh is telling you.

[00:43:05] Joshua B. Lee: Thanks, Brad. I mean, I haven’t run their businesses and I haven’t lived their lives. So, I can’t be them without them. So, I’m sharing what I know based on what we do but always follow the rules within your own industry.

[00:43:18] Brad Johnson: So, here’s a question from Josh, a real-life advisor that I know. Do you recommend that people purchase Sales Navigator through LinkedIn or is that necessary?

[00:43:26] Joshua B. Lee: Yes, great question. Let’s transition to that. So, this is a huge piece. There’s two different ways that I teach and work with my clients. I hate cold calls and I hate cold email so I don’t ever do it. If I wouldn’t do it to myself because, look, I’ve done a lot of things that I would not want to be done in my past. Look, I’m not going to call myself a saint by any means, but I try and be better now. I want to be able to be better and make this world better, not only for my kids, but for everyone’s kids so I do things that I would only want to happen to me. So, on one side, we have our engagement engine. We engage with people that engage with us. When we’re posting out clear, consistent content, everyone that’s liking, commenting, going through, we’re reaching out and connect with them more. Those are where we start our engagement and connecting with them and appreciate them for doing these things. On the other side with Sales Navigator, where most people use it as a spamming or marketing tool, we use it as a social listening tool. And it’s really important, by the way, to do it.

I mean, I tell everyone to, if one client cannot cover the $89 a month or $80 a month for Sales Navigator, then LinkedIn is not the platform for you anyway. I mean, it is not a platform to be able to sell widgets for $20. It is for a higher-end service. So, that’s a self-identify real quick. If you like closing one client will make you $100, well, that helps you real quick. LinkedIn is not the platform for you. I’m just going to be 100% honest. So, talking about Sales Navigator, I mean, that’s what it’s all about. I mean, Brad, you and I talked about this as well, too. We use it as a social listening tool. So, let’s ask the question. Why does everyone in this world, I don’t care who you are, where you are, what you do, first and foremost, above all else, even if you don’t know it, why does everyone post online? Let’s see.

[00:45:14] Brad Johnson: Yeah. This is question number 3 or 4. And I already know the answer, so I’m not going to spoil it. So, yeah, to rehash what Josh just asked, what’s the number one reason that people post online? Throw your guesses in the comments. I’ll have my team throw some of the guesses in here and this can get interesting, this question.

[00:45:36] Joshua B. Lee: It is but, I mean…

[00:45:37] Brad Johnson: While we’re waiting for a few of those to feed in, I just want to hit Josh’s comment who asked on the Sales Navigator. Here’s what I would say, Josh, on the recommendations and this once again goes back to the compliance conversation. Now, RIAs, IARs, obviously you cannot have testimonials. I think many in our space would consider a recommendation a testimonial. So, once again, start with the BD, the RIA, whatever regulatory body you live under as a financial advisor and we got people from the UK on here. So, that’s a whole another country with different guidelines. Start with compliance and suitability. They will tell you the rules to the game that you’re playing, and then just follow the rules. It’s really no different than anything else you do in financial services. So, here’s a guess from Logan, “To get attention.” I guess from Josh, “To connect.” Not bad. Those are the first two.

[00:46:32] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. So, look…

[00:46:32] Brad Johnson: You’ll just give them the punch line.

[00:46:34] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s just go into it. Let’s give them the punch line. So, look, I mean, above all else, we all post to be able to get engagement, right? We post to get those likes, to get those comments. Basically, what that is, is to get that hit of dopamine every time that we get one of these. It’s like, yes, like someone saw what I did. So, they liked, they commented. That makes us feel good. That gives us a hit of dopamine. So, that’s what I want you to think about. I mean, that’s before everything else. I mean, we’d say it’s like to be an advocate to be able to reel this but that’s really what it’s all about. I mean, even though we don’t realize it subconsciously, we get a little high off of that. So, that’s what we want to be. We want to be dopamine dealers. We want to be able to listen to our clients first, not spam them. So, that’s what I use Sales Navigator for because it shows me out of my ideal avatar who’s posted online in the last 30 days, and then now I can go and engage on their content first, given that hit of dopamine like comment, and then I can reach out to them, and start with appreciation.

And, Brad, I saw your recent post, man. I know you probably saw, I liked it. I just want to say thank you. I appreciate you posting that. I’d love to be able to connect with you. So, I have more people like you within my content, right? We’re just being human. The things that we talk about and how we treat people, it’s just the same things that our mothers and fathers taught us as kids, the golden rules, to be able to treat people the way you want to be treated, to be able to be respectful, be nice, and that’s what we do. That’s why it resonates so well because we’re just teaching people how to be human online again in a world of automation. So, when I say that, let’s go into it. Let’s show them real quick, the Sales Navigator.

[00:48:14] Brad Johnson: So, the opposite of about the last 50 connections I’ve got. But which one? Once again, I think one of the things we talk about a lot at our company is if everybody else is doing this, you want to show up differently. I mean, that’s marketing in general. If you’re just another voice in the crowd, you’re just going to blend in and what you’re doing is one of my clients, he calls it you’re scratching the record, you’re showing up differently. So, I love that.

[00:48:37] Joshua B. Lee: And there’s so much noise already out there. We have to be able to break that noise. We want to be those butterflies. That’s scratching the record, right? That makes you go, “Whoa, that’s different.” And that’s the piece, right? It’s rare that someone reaches out and sends you a personalized message to thank you for what you’re doing because the average person on LinkedIn gets less than 1% engagement ratio. So, when you get in and you do it, you’re one of those people, it stands out. You’re creating space not only to be heard, but you’re creating space for them so they feel that they have been heard. And that’s important to be able to create space on both sides of the relationship because that allows opportunity to happen. So, we’re in Sales Navigator, right? I mean, I go in right out the gate to be able to come in here and I do lead filters. You know, this is really where it’s important. Actually, I apologize. We want to make sure we’re in here. So, this allows us to be able to kind of go through and it gives us multiple different ways to be able to reach out to. And I’m just going to put a couple in here real quick so we can show the United States. I want to do second-degree connections because, look, I want someone that at least knows me by one degree. That seven degrees of separation, Kevin Bacon, or whatever it is. Some of the things I say in here they’d be like, “Wow.  He’s older than I realized.”

[00:49:48] Brad Johnson: Hey, the Kevin Bacon game made it to Kansas too. You’re good.

[00:49:51] Joshua B. Lee: There we go. There we go. So, like if there was, one, the people that you help, what industry would you say that you really see a lot of opportunities to grab, if one of these stands out to you?

[00:50:00] Brad Johnson: Well, right now, I think one of the things that’s happening, I mean, you’ve got COVID-19 and the craziness and I can’t even imagine being in the healthcare industry right now. But if you look at the opportunity in our world in the financial advisor space, I think it’s some of those industries that have been decimated. So, travel, tourism. I don’t know if airlines is something…

[00:50:21] Joshua B. Lee: Leisure, travel, and tourism. Okay. Let’s go there.

[00:50:23] Brad Johnson: Because a lot of those people probably lost their jobs, which means advisors could offer them great advice right now in navigating this financially.

[00:50:30] Joshua B. Lee: Exactly. So, we kind of go and, look, I only speak English so I’m kind of limited on that but we can go in there. We go senior level and go, “Oh, we want to deal with the business owner, owners, stuff of that nature. There’s lots of different things we can go and do but we’re not trying to be able to cast a huge wide net. It’s not like we have to have…

[00:50:49] Brad Johnson:  Can you filter by recently lost their job or transition out of their job?

[00:50:55] Joshua B. Lee: So, you have different people right here, right? So, you’ve got yours and current position less than one year. That would be the best way, for me, to be able to show that. So, now, I’ll show you something even interesting. So, you can because, look, we go in here, let’s say we go in here and I’m like, “Alright, this works for right now.” I’m going to go in here. When you’re going through, now you really want to dial in, look, change jobs in the past 90 days. You’ve got it right here. So, that’s only 3,500. That’s a much better thing. Now, me, I go in here…

[00:51:26] Brad Johnson: All right. So, real quick because we’ve got a bunch of beginners on here, including myself. So, what you just filtered by is the travel industry people that have switched jobs in the last 90 days?

[00:51:36] Joshua B. Lee: Right. So, let’s see what we’ve got right here. People have changed jobs in the last 90 days. This is two months, two months in a row, right? Two months. Three months. One month. One month. So, people are changing. They’re jumping around and you can actually be able to go and be able to look at different things like that. So, me personally, like I don’t look on that side a lot but some of my clients do. The biggest thing that we look at is this. We want to go on who’s posted on LinkedIn the last 30 days? Because this gives us the opportunity to engage and give them that hit of dopamine. It allows me to go in and go, “Oh, I want to look at Jordan. Let me look at Jordan. Okay. Scott, he commented a week ago. And now I can actually like on Jordan’s post, reach out.” Now, make sure you’re looking at what he’s talking about. If it’s something that’s just not appropriate to reach out and appreciate him for posting again, common sense factors but you can like and comment, and they can reach out and now I can pull up Jordan’s profile. I can hit the connect button and do a personal message. “Hey, Jordan, I saw your recent post, man, about a week ago. I really appreciate that. That was amazing. I love to be able to connect with you.”

And so, I can have more of those kind of posts within my feed, right? This allows us to be able to start building that relationship with them. It’s a much better way to be able to reach out and connect with someone rather than go on and just send an invitation without a message or, “Hey, Jordan. I see you’re wearing glasses. Me too. Let’s connect.” Jordan’s probably watching right now and he’s like, “I never told him to look at my profile.”

[00:53:03] Brad Johnson: So, just to be clear here, all of that filtering so to go back to Josh’s question, should I or should I not get Sales Navigator, all of this filtering is by purchasing Sales Navigator that you have access to this?

[00:53:16] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. Because we can go in. We go to a relationship, now it’s even smaller, like I can’t deal with 35,000 or 11,000 people. But if I go to this second degree, I can definitely probably reach out and be able to start doing 717 people, and they always have a relationship. I have some kind of shared relationship with them. I’m like, “Yeah.” So, that’s a much more ease. 770, a much easier way to be able to go about it than 11,000 people. That’s exhausting.

[00:53:42] Brad Johnson: So, let’s do a real-life case study. This is what’s so fun about this, but my light bulbs coming on here. So, I’ve got a great office. They’re up in the Detroit, Michigan area. Obviously, you’ve got the big three, car dealership.

[00:53:53] Joshua B. Lee: Hold on.

[00:53:54] Brad Johnson: Okay, cool. Yeah. I want to go fast here.

[00:53:56] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s reset it all. Okay. So, you want Detroit.

[00:53:59] Brad Johnson: We want to Detroit, Michigan.

[00:54:01] Joshua B. Lee: Okay. A million people.

[00:54:04] Brad Johnson: They’re somehow in the car industry for GM.

[00:54:09] Joshua B. Lee: Automotive?

[00:54:10] Brad Johnson: Automotive. There you go. Perfect.

[00:54:11] Joshua B. Lee: Okay. Now we went from 1 million to 230,000.

[00:54:15] Brad Johnson: And then let’s call it second-degree connections because we know some of these…

[00:54:19] Joshua B. Lee: Well, mine will be different. Mine might drop you way too low because I’m not in your industry. So, yeah, I dropped 681 real quick. But let’s leave that off for now and just look at other ones because, look, I don’t have a lot of connection in the automotive industry I was amazed to find 681 that I…

[00:54:39] Brad Johnson: So, right now if I was in Detroit, Michigan, and I just read, “Hey, GM is laying off a bunch of workers because the insanity that’s going on right now,” where they can’t…

[00:54:50] Joshua B. Lee: You think less than one year?

[00:54:51] Brad Johnson:  Yeah.

[00:54:52] Joshua B. Lee: Less than one year. Are there anyone specific that you talk to the specific titles, functions, company headcount? Do that matter?

[00:54:59] Brad Johnson: Usually, I would say it’s people in kind of the management level of those types of companies.

[00:55:04] Joshua B. Lee: So, we kind of go into manager. Let’s just say manager. Now, let’s just move to that.

[00:55:10] Brad Johnson: Yeah, real quick. So, the less than one year would mean they’ve only been employed for one year, correct?

[00:55:15] Joshua B. Lee: Right. At their current…

[00:55:16] Brad Johnson: Can we take that off? And then will it still show us the people that have switched jobs in the last…?

[00:55:21] Joshua B. Lee: So, now we go in, we got 475 have change jobs in the last 90 days in Detroit, Michigan.

[00:55:28] Brad Johnson: Wow.

[00:55:29] Joshua B. Lee: Now that doesn’t allow us to be the social listing. That allows us to be able to see these people. Please do not reach out to someone and then just start spamming them. “Hey, let’s connect, let’s connect, let’s connect, let’s connect,” because that misses the whole point. Now, this gives you those people that have changed jobs. Now, you could try to be able to go across this list, and then go to the thousand people that are under this that have posted on LinkedIn last year. Now, you can see too and be able to see the five months in a row, two years in a row, one year in a row, one year, one month. So, it allows you to be able to go in to be able to do that. So, that lets you choose. I mean, that’s why we even kind of go in like you said and go where is that?

[00:56:06] Brad Johnson: Well, yes. So, here’s where I see this, I mean, this applying.

[00:56:10] Joshua B. Lee: And then you can save the search. And so, the cool thing about this, Brad, is you save all these different searches because I don’t have to go in remember. Every time I save a search every week, the search updates, and then it only shows me the people that fell into this category in the last week which is much better to be able to go into. I’d rather know the new 10 people that fell in this category over the last week rather than the thousand that I’m having to go through and comb through every single time.

[00:56:35] Brad Johnson: So, here’s an interesting idea where you could use this tool right here. I’ve seen a lot of financial advisors over the years have a lot of success where they throw say they’ve got a concentrated niche client base. Let’s say they work at Ford, and they’ve helped five Ford executives over the last 10 years, kind of navigate their individual retirement plan, and transition into retirement. Well, a lot of times they would do what I’d call like more of a private dinner and say, “Hey, are there other Ford executives that are navigating the same thing that need help? “Hey, I’ll host the dinner. We’ll come in and I’ll share two, three, four topics that are very relevant and specific to just your retirement plan and some things you might want to think about.” Can’t do that now, right? Nobody’s going to dinner with anyone. But what we could do, I mean, we’re on Zoom right now. You could do a virtual round table, same thing, use that LinkedIn tool. Now, you’ve got those second-degree connections that know people that you’ve already worked with and you could even stimulate that conversation with existing clients, hey, maybe you’ve got a circle.

Once again, why are we doing this? We’re giving our time. We’re serving the financial advisor community because like, hey, they’re navigating this virtual world. That’s why this conversation is happening. That’s why The Private Virtual Advisor Facebook group exists so we can serve and create a conversation around it. I’m going to assume it’s going to work for financial advisors that choose to step up and serve during this time too. Would you say that’s fair? I mean, what are your thoughts along this one?

[00:58:02] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. 100%, man. I mean, what you’re laying at is perfectly in alignment. I mean, you want this to be human, right? I mean, that’s always the biggest thing to be able to connect and really engage with other individuals. And that’s kind of where the other side leads, right? I mean, we talked about going into when you’re posting that content and being able to gauge like I know you wanted me to kind of show like an outline on how to be able to connect with these people after you engage like after you appreciate them, what do you do next, right?

[00:58:29] Brad Johnson: Which, by the way, I think for those that are watching live, wherever you’re watching, I know we’re on Twitter because Josh wanted to stimulate his old Periscope audience that has missed him for a while. So, I think we’re on Twitter now, we’re on Facebook. We’re working on LinkedIn. We’ll get there eventually.

[00:58:45] Joshua B. Lee: Working together on it.

[00:58:46] Brad Johnson:  Josh is going to pull out all the stops for me. He knows people. But on that note, Josh was kind enough to share like three different resources. They’re already available in the private Facebook group. He also went above and beyond and is going to give some of his time and actually hop in there and look at some comments, some questions.

[00:59:04] Joshua B. Lee: Hey, I know we’re kind of running, you know, we’ve been doing this for a while. I just want to make sure that I give as much as I try with everything to be able to give as much as possible. So, if there’s anything that we’re missing, Brad, if you want to go and message we can, we can also do a secondary follow-up if we need to or live to be able to go into it deeper. Whatever you feel, I mean I’d like to be able to take a whirl.

[00:59:25] Brad Johnson: I think at this point, so far, I feel like I haven’t completely messed up this live streaming thing. So, maybe what we do is we kind of wrap here and then we’ll be in the private Facebook group. So once again, if you’re…

[00:59:38] Joshua B. Lee: Why don’t we do that? We could do a follow-up and go into the messaging aspect within that. So, look, if you guys want to see a follow-up to this live, I’m going to do a second one with Brad if he’s up for it, specifically only for the Facebook group. And we’re going to go into what I’m doing, my engagement in directly. We’ve just scratched the surface. I mean, we’re going to really go into and go a little bit deeper because there’s only other ways to be able to get this type of information as one, to hire him, two to go into one of my masterclasses, or now three, if Brad’s up for it, I’ll go in and we’ll lay out a little bit more of the messaging sequence on how after connect. Now, we’ve talked about how to engage and connect, but how do we actually convert grow? We can do that within the group if you’re up for it.

[01:00:25] Brad Johnson: Josh, you’re the man. And this goes back to a rule that I learned a long time ago. It’s great people, the circles that you run in. It kind of takes us full circle back to the original part of the beginning of this conversation. I was introduced to you by Jon Vroman who I have the utmost respect for. He’s made me a better dad, better husband.

[01:00:44] Joshua B. Lee: Let’s say that too, right, if you’re a dad check out Front Row Dads because it’s been one of the best investments, best groups I’ve ever been. It’s changed not only my life but my children’s lives as well and that’s why we’re here.

[01:00:56] Brad Johnson: Yeah. And that was Jon Vroman was the mutual connector that I’m like, oh my gosh, everything Josh just shared in the last 30 minutes is I got to get this in front of the financial advisory community. So, I’m going to close. I’m going to do what the financial advisor community fully knows they have to, which is I’m going to read a blanket disclosure to make sure that we cover all our bases here and I’m going to say this one last time. I said it at the beginning. I said it in the middle, I’m going to say it at the end. Before you run with any strategies that Josh talked about here, go to whoever covers your compliance and suitability in the world that you live in, start there. I can’t stress that enough. So, with that, this interview is provided for informational purposes only. Financial professionals are ultimately responsible for the use and implementation of strategies discussed and should be aware of all applicable compliance requirements. Investment Advisors are highly encouraged to seek pre-approval from any applicable broker-dealer or RIA prior to implementing new marketing techniques. Neither The Elite Advisor Blueprint or Advisors Excel or the Virtual Advisor Community or Joshua B. Lee, or anybody else guaranteed the results from the strategies discussed today.

So, I don’t like to end the conversation that way but I want to make sure I cover all the bases here. So, I just want to say thank you, Josh. You’re the man. You overserve today and your time is valuable. So, thanks for sharing it with the audience.

[01:02:16] Joshua B. Lee: Yeah. Of course, and we can end on now did everyone see all the secret items that we hid in our room for you to find? Make sure you – because that’s what we’re all doing on live, right? We’re all going, “What’s behind them? Where are they at right now?”

[01:02:30] Brad Johnson: Well, number one, none of our kids like Zoom bomb this. Normally, I’d have a four-year-old running. So, that didn’t happen. Somehow you gave yourself a haircut that looks incredibly good by yourself. I need a tip there. We were joking before I went live. I’m like I’m either going to come out of this with Jesus hair or like a one guard buzz, one of the two, but it’s…

[01:02:53] Joshua B. Lee: Oh yeah, that’s what everyone’s kind of going through right now. Now, if I could just let my son. Even though I swear when my father used to cut my hair as a child, I said I would never do that my son. Now I’m like, please, dude, let me cut your hair.” He’s like, “No. You need to take me to the place that gives me a massage too when I get my haircut.” I’m like, brother, if I cut my own hair, we can get yours too.” So, it’s funny how all of a sudden, our new world is changing what we actually believed. And that’s the whole thing, right? That’s what we talked about today. Let’s change together what it looks like to be able to actually connect and really engage with our ideal clients and treat them like other human beings. It’s amazing the opportunities that will come your way.

[01:03:33] Brad Johnson: For sure. Well, I appreciate it, Josh. Thanks for joining and we’ll continue the conversation in the Facebook group.

[01:03:39] Joshua B. Lee: Love it, my friend. Bye.

[01:03:40] Brad Johnson: Thanks, my man. We’ll see you.

[END]