169 | Grow your business by becoming a thought leader on LinkedIn, with Ann Carden

Having a crystal clear positioning is essential to building authority online. When you have a clear and specific position, it helps you stand out from the competition and makes it easier for your target audience to understand what you do and how you can help them. This, in turn, helps you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with your audience.

Here are a few reasons why having a clear positioning is important:

1. It helps you differentiate yourself from your competitors: With so much noise and competition online, it's important to have a clear and unique position that sets you apart. This helps you stand out and helps your target audience understand what makes you different and why they should choose you over others.
2. It helps you attract the right audience: A clear positioning helps you attract the right audience because it clearly communicates who you serve and how you can help them. This helps you attract the right people and avoids attracting those who are not a good fit for your business.
3. It helps you build trust: When you have a clear positioning, it shows that you are an expert in your field and that you have a clear understanding of the problems and challenges your target audience faces. This helps you build trust with your audience and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
4. It helps you create consistent messaging: Having a clear positioning helps you create consistent messaging across all your marketing channels. This helps you build a strong brand and ensures that your message is always clear and consistent, which is essential for building authority and credibility.

In conclusion, having a crystal clear positioning is essential to building authority online. It helps you differentiate yourself from the competition, attract the right audience, build trust, and create consistent messaging.

So if you want to establish yourself as a thought leader and build a strong online presence, make sure you have a clear and specific positioning. If you want to learn the details and how to do it right, listen to this great interview with Ann Carden. Ann is a coach, and a successful serial entrepreneur who specializes in in growing authority as a lever for business growth.

Connect with Ann on Linkedin

Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏

Transcript

Ann Carden: 0:00

Everyone needs to get positioned. That is across the board. You have to get positioned as the expert, as the authority, or you will not get the connections. You will not get people to take you seriously.

Isar Meitis: 0:11

Hello, and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis your host, and the person you're listening to is Anne Cardin. Anne is an expert in crystallizing people's messages and crystallizing the value that they provide in order to have very clear positioning across all channels online so they can grow their authority and grow their businesses. In this episode, she's going to cover two aspects. 1) How do you define what is that thing you wanna be expert in? How do you pick it? How do you crystallize the message? And the other part is how to use LinkedIn in order to push that message out. So we're going to cover both theory and practical tactical implementation. And it can really help anybody in any position, whether you are a solopreneur, running a large business or anything in between to grow your personal career as well as grow your business. Hello, and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis your host, and I've got a special treat for you today. You know that I'm a huge believer in developing authority as part of business progress. I do this for myself. I help my clients do it for themselves. In general, I think that developing authority, in other words, being considered an expert in your field, is an amazing lever for both personal and business growth. While probably almost anybody in business knows that too many people, business leaders or wanna be business leaders, do not invest enough time and or resources in that. And I think the reasons are something that they would be uncomfortable doing that. Like I don't wanna be on stage or talk to people or go live or do all these things, and some just think that it requires too many resources or time that they don't necessarily have. Not really true. My guest today, Anne Cardin, is the ultimate person to ask about these topics. She has been helping small and mid-size business leaders grow their businesses for over a decade. Before that, she built and installed several of her. Own businesses. So she also walked the walk and she's going to share with us, first of all, why you should do that, why you should build an authority as part of growing your business, but also how and in the how we're gonna dive into what is it, building an authority, what does it mean? We're gonna dissect that and figure out the steps you need to take, but also how to leverage LinkedIn, which is amazing tool in order to. Build the authority and grow your business through that. As I mentioned, I personally think this can change the trajectory of any person's career and their business, and hence, it's very important and because of that, I'm really truly excited and humbled to have Anne as the guest of the show and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator.

Ann Carden: 4:03

Thank you, Isar. It's so nice to be here with you. I appreciate it.

Isar Meitis: 4:08

You've been in the business world for a very long time. You're

Ann Carden: 4:14

aging me. Yes.

Isar Meitis: 4:15

Sorry for you have a lot of experience. Well, condensed and 40 plus years, so yes. 40 plus years. And like I said, some of it you've grown and sold businesses. Some of it is, you've been helping a lot of people do it at. When did it click to you that authority building that becoming an expert known in a specific field is a very important lever for basically everything else in business.

Ann Carden: 4:45

You know, it's really interesting. I think the way it, the way we think of it now, it was when I came into the online world and I started marketing online. But if I really think back, I've known this forever. I, even when I was building my first businesses, it was always about how can I stand out? How can I be different? How can I. sell more premium. How can I, you know, just really elevate my brand? And I did that in my very first business, and I did it in all of my businesses since we just didn't call it, I didn't call it authority building. I didn't call it expert positioning, but it is what I did in all of those businesses to be able to really. Get over my competition to make them irrelevant, to be able to sell my services over theirs and even at a higher level and higher end. So, yeah, I, I've been really doing this forever.

Isar Meitis: 5:38

So you really figured it out more intuitively. There wasn't like an aha moment in your career. Yes. I wanna ask you a follow up question that's related to what I said in the beginning, because I am truly curious about it because you work with a lot of people and you have worked with really a lot of people over the past, I dunno, 15 years. Yes. How many people. When you start working with them already, get it and do it before they meet you and do it well versus how many people have to go through a journey to A, understand the importance, and B, really invest resources in actually doing this.

Ann Carden: 6:11

So I, I work with both. I work with some people that are very, very well established, say online, and they really do have that positioning. However, because I help move people into getting more premium clients, bigger deals, I typically have to shift what they're doing to build it, to even elevate it more and even, really get it dialed in so that they truly do look like the expert in the authority. In a category of one. So if they do come with a lot of what I call digital assets and they've got a lot of their online digital foot, digital footprint in place, a lot of times it's re strategizing and in a way rebranding them, kind of giving them a new identity, but then also adding other components. A lot of my client I help them, you know, get started podcasting because it is a way I teach how to get clients through their podcasting and partnerships, through their podcasting. So not only are they putting out great, valuable content, but they're actually growing their business with their podcast. And I'm not talking about building a huge audience and growing and monetizing, I'm talking about actually growing their existing business. And then all those other things can still come. Initially we wanna get them bringing, calling in their clients and calling in partnerships. So, we, I help them really elevate, I help them put other things in place. Like if they don't have a book, we wanna get a book done for them. If they aren't speaking on stages, we wanna get them speaking on stages. We wanna get them guesting on podcasts. So all of those. Things are what I call next level marketing strategies, and that's really the area and the arena that I play with my clients in. But then I do have clients that don't have much going on at all, and we have to completely establish that whole thing for them, get them in the right place, start elevating that brand. Once we get in position. It is a game changer. It's a game changer when we do that with people.

Isar Meitis: 8:14

Two quick questions. One, percentage wise, how many people have very little or nothing versus how many people have something that's worth mentioning? Ballpark?

Ann Carden: 8:23

Well, most of the people that I work with are doing something online, right? They, they have something going, they just don't have the right things going or they don't have the right positioning. They don't look like an expert really. They just sort of have a presence or so that would be, that's really a lot of them, but they are doing things. Yeah. Got

Isar Meitis: 8:44

it. So, so you think the level of awareness to what we're doing is already out there? It's now just figuring out how to do it right. To get the most out of the efforts you're already putting in.

Ann Carden: 8:52

Oh, you just hit the nail on the head. It's about doing it right. I see so many coaches and consultants. Wasting time throwing stuff out there. I call it Hope Marketing. even putting out content and just praying people will find it. That just doesn't, that's just not a strategy.

Isar Meitis: 9:10

Okay, so now, now we have the general idea of where the population is of, of business leaders out there, at least the people you're working with. Let's, first of all, define. what Authority means like, I wanna establish my authority. What the hell does that mean?

Ann Carden: 9:27

It, it really means you look like the expert in your niche for what you do, and you look like the authority. So, okay. Think about. If you were going to have brain surgery, I like to use this metaphor, this analogy. If you're gonna have brain surgery, you're not gonna go to your family physician, right? Who's the authority for brain surgery? It's the brain surgeon. And so, and then, and then if you had your choice between two brain surgeons, and one brain surgeon spoke on stages, had books, was on television, was in the media, and you could clearly see, I mean, what would be your perception? So I think the really important thing for people to understand is authority is all about the outside perception. Oh, I call it authority and positioning, but it's all about the outside percep perception that people see of you and your brand and what is. that First thought that comes into their mind. Do you look like the expert? I say, do you look like the Lamborghini or do you look like the budget used car So I think that that's all, that all kind of speaks to authority.

Isar Meitis: 10:33

Fantastic. So now I understand what authority is. It's basically what other people think of you. Yes. Right. And, and I'll, I'll even make that more extreme, what they think of you when you're not in the room. Right. What do you say that's true about you, when you're not around? That's true. Awesome. How do I start? Like, first of all, I think I assume that I need to figure out what I be an what I want to be an. In, right? Correct. So, so take us through the steps. Like if I'm just getting started and I really don't know, I have a business, I'm doing something, how do I figure out the, I guess what, before I figure out the how, right. So any business can do this. I want you to know I've done it with plumbing companies as well as consultants and high level people. but any, anyone can do it. But it really is about carving out a place in the market where you excel or where, you know, That you are better than most people. And so then it's about, okay, what do your ideal clients want? Figuring out who is that, that ideal client profile or customer profile, what do they most want? And then positioning yourself in a way that's going to be relevant to them, but in a way that you also can deliver. So, For example, it wouldn't do any good for me to talk about helping people scale, consultants and coaches and service entrepreneurs to scale into multiple six and seven figures. If I had no idea how to do that with ultra high-end clients, right? And so you have to make sure that you can back up what you do. It is about, but there's no one else out there that I am aware of really, that has their business established the exact same way that I do, and they're not selling themselves the exact same way that I do.

Ann Carden: 12:19

Sure, there might be people similar, but, it, it's all around setting yourself apart. And anyone, like I said, anyone can do it. You have to understand what people wanna buy.

Isar Meitis: 12:30

I love what you're saying very much. I wanna connect it. I wanna say two things. One is the subtext that if people weren't paying attention, you already said yourself. You're serving high-end coaches. That wanna reach these kind of figures that want to go after the big fish. Yes. You've already very clearly not even thinking about it because I'm, I assume you've done this before, you, you very clearly know how to identify the niche of the people that you serve, and hence you know that these are the people you can serve better then. Basically anybody else that you know, and hopefully everybody, anybody else that they know. Right? Because that will make you the person they're gonna work with. Right? So that's kinda like the subjects of what you said. Another thing that I really like, because I literally just released an episode this week that talks about how to identify the value that your clients are seeking. Usually it comes from a combination of two things. One is the concept of job to be done. The concept of job to be done says what is it that you're trying to achieve? Not what features they're looking for in your product, not what kind of coach they did a search for, what they're actually trying to achieve. And sometimes they don't even know. Sometimes you have to ask them a few questions to really peel the onion, to really understand the core reason. So one thing is what they're trying to achieve. And then the second thing is what GAP exists? Between the current solution that they have or the current solution they're aware of. And now if you focus on that, you can bring that extra unique value that they're not getting, and hence you can become an expert on that thing. So these are adding my 2 cents to, to what you said.

Ann Carden: 14:10

No, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's one of the things that I teach people is really how to rejection proof their offers and, it, it's really about if you sell people what they want to help them get what they, you know what they need, you, you will be able to close deals, you'll be able to close higher deals. And so yes, understanding who your market is is a huge piece of that as.

Isar Meitis: 14:38

So, okay, so now I understand who my clients are. I understand the gaps that they have. I understand the niche that I want to go after. What's the next.

Ann Carden: 14:50

Yeah, so then you wanna make sure that you position, you have, you should have a strong positioning statement and a strong positioning statement basically says who you help, so that it's very clear. And this should be across everywhere. I mean, if you Google me, you're going to see that I'm a high end, high ticket. You're gonna see high ticket, ultra high ticket. That's the language you're gonna see out there. You're gonna see that I work with coaches and consultants. You're gonna see that I've written books around the topic. You're going to see that I have a podcast around helping experts. So all of that becomes part of building up that footprint, that digital footprint, those digital assets. And the nice thing is we have that opportunity today. We didn't always have that opportunity. You would have to go run an ad or go do direct mail or whatever it is to establish. or Speak at the front of the room to establish your authority, but today we have social media, we have live streaming, we have podcasts. We have other ways that we're basically creating our own stage, and this is a really, really, really powerful way to get started, but get positioned for your clients for what you do. What's the problem you solve? Here's another thing, because I help people get high end clients. You cannot get a hundred thousand dollars client if you solve a$10,000 problem. So it's really important that you understand the problems you solve at a higher level, and then you get positioned as the expert and the authority for that. But also you can start with content. So once you get that positioning statement in place, content, and then what your process. That you help people with, that you take them through. All of these things become pieces of that foundation.

Isar Meitis: 16:33

Love that. Brilliant. I wanna add again, 2 cents. One is, again, the, the word I hear behind what you're saying is consistency and consistency on two different levels. One is consistently speak about this. On every platform that you think your clients are on. I mean, don't go on TikTok if you don't think your clients are there, but if you think they're there, absolutely go on TikTok. So people saying, wow, well what I'll do on TikTok or why would I go on Facebook? Or why, or, or whatever, wherever you think your direct customers are, be there. So be consistent in publishing and talking about these topics. But the other thing that I think I hear you say more importantly is consistency messaging. Yes, you've said you're gonna hear me say Highend clients, ultra Highend client, like Right. Keep on saying the same thing. People are gonna in people's brains, Anne's image and posts and whatever's gonna connect to ultra Highend clients because she says that 50,000 times in the last three years. So that will connect in your brain and that becomes what you talked about before perception.

Ann Carden: 17:39

Now, I just wanna add to that though, ISAR, I mean, there's a lot of components I help people with. So when they come to me and they say, you know, I wanna get bigger deals, I wanna scale, I do a lot of things with them. You know, I get'em positioned. We get their offers, right? We get their marketing right. We, how are they gonna market? How are they gonna get clients? How are they gonna close the deals? I have an A to Z approach. However, my all-encompassing positioning statement is helping consult, establish consultants and coaches, who wanna scale into multiple six and seven figures with ultra high end clients so they can really make more and more, less. That's my overall statement. So just because I do a lot of things, a lot of people get hung up here. They're like, oh, I do a lot of things. I don't know. How do I decide? You don't have to decide if you have a lot of expertise, but you just have to figure out how can you package that for those ideal clients so that it's relevant to them and it's something that they, you know, that they really want. And that's really the key. And then make that congruent on your website anywhere and everywhere they're seeing it, they should be seeing the same.

Isar Meitis: 18:47

I think what you're saying is don't publish what you do on the day to day, publish the outcome, and who is that outcome for? Because that will attract the right people. Like you're saying, you help these kind of coaches to achieve these kind of goals for themselves. It's not what you do. You do this in 50 different ways, like you said, but that's what they're gonna get, and that becomes what attracts them to you. And I a hundred percent agree with that approach. How do I do that? How do I tell that story in order to attract people? So, okay, now I have figured out the clients I wanna serve, figured out the niche in which I'm the best, figured out my, my positioning statement, how do I get the word out? You have to just get active. I mean, you can do it a lot of different ways that I, you know, talked about earlier. You can get on stages, you can live stream, but, and I know we're gonna talk a little bit more about this, but you do have to build a captive audience with your ideal market. So people do have to see you. And that means one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is you need to do both outbound and inbound work. You do the outbound work to get the inbound leads, and a lot of people think, oh, if I just, you know, if I build it, they will come. If I just show up, live it, they'll come. But if you don't have somewhat a network or somewhat an audience who's going to see that? I mean, the algorithms are not going to even show. There's no one to even show it to. Now when you build out your audience, I did a live stream this morning, for example. and I had someone reach out to me in my inbox and said, I don't know how I came across you, but I'm so glad I did. She came across me because somebody we were connected to, you know, must have said they wanted to come to my livestream or whatever. I don't know how all the algorithms and everything work. I'm not an IT expert, but that is what it takes to get that bigger reach. You can also leverage other people's audiences. I'm doing it with you right now. You, you know, I'm on your podcast, you're gonna share it with your audience. And so that all starts expanding your reach, but also connecting with the right people, building partnerships, all of those are ways, you know, just get super active on social media and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. When I went live this morning, I was live in five. places You know, because I used a software that did that, right? We have that capability, and so it looks like you're everywhere, but you're not really everywhere. I was only on there for 20 minutes doing that live stream, but it showed up in lots of places. So those are all ways to get started, but you have to use your voice. You have to be heard. You have to be seen. That is ultimately what you are trying to do, but you're trying to do it in a way that it will bring people to you, that it will attract the right people and bring them into your ecosystem to start following you or connecting with you. Brilliant. I wanna add some technical details for people who do not know that. So, you know, Anne spoke about two things that I think are very critical. One is something I, I borrow this. Phrase from Pamela Slim. she's an amazing author and she talks about watering halls, right? The watering halls are where the people that you think about Savannah watering halls, that that's where all the animals are getting together in this particular example is where your audience are congregating, right? Those places where you can reach the most amount of audience that is relevant to you with the least amount of effort. Yes. And you have to think about those places and, and Anne mention, More than a few, right? Go to the right conferences, speak in the right forums. Be a part of the right groups on either socials or communities or whatever, and be active in those places because then the right people will know you. The other thing that you mentioned that is very important is the active work. You gotta let people know you gotta publish it, you gotta share it. You gotta ask people to share it, right? You. Leverage the tools that like ansett are free today. Yes. You let people know that you're doing these things, that they can join and get free value and you have. Provide them good value, otherwise they're not going to come back and they're not gonna share it the next time you do it, right? So all these things are, are critical. The last thing is going live. Going live today is extremely easy. And Anne mentioned on several different platforms. There are multiple tools today that probably the two most common ones on our re stream and Streamy yard, that'll allow you from your browser to go live to several different platforms at the same time. So, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Switch if you really want to, and a few others. So by going live, once you invest 20 minutes and people across multiple platforms see you at the same time and they can write comments and you can comment back and you can answer their questions and so on. So these tools are available and they are, if not totally free, practically free in the, in the concept of a business. And it costs whatever, 20 bucks a month, it's negligible, right, to have these tools. So, great, great advice. I wanna focus in, in all these things back to LinkedIn because to me today this is still, and, and there's other platforms and there's other, but I think LinkedIn is still where most business people come to look for business. Yes. And hence, I think the context in which people come in, make them more open to have a business conversation. What suggestions do you have to do the things you talked about within the LinkedIn context? What do you recommend and teach your clients to do in order to be the most. Effective while they're doing

Ann Carden: 24:39

it. Yeah. So some of it comes down to who they are targeting. There's a little, you know, there's different strategies for different types of clients. for example, working with a high level ceo, you're going to use a very different strategy than you would use. if I were just going to go. Talk to a consultant or a coach, so, so you have to understand the best way to reach them. Everyone needs to get positioned. That is across the board. You have to get positioned as the expert, as the authority, or you will not get the connections. You will not get people to take you seriously. When people come to my inbox, after I reach out to them to connect because they're an ideal fit and they say, I am so honored That you con that you wanted to connect with me, you know, you're positioned well, that's, that's the best thing. I mean, you know, that they feel like, wow, you know, this person wants to connect with me. if you look like kind of the budget, not the expert, not the authority, people are like, why is this person connecting with me? My clients, for example, get about a 70 to 80% connection rate when they reach out to people. When they reach out to their target audience on LinkedIn. Unless those people just aren't active. So the first place is you have to get established as the authority. It has to be very clear who you're for and, and a lot of people try to set themselves up as a jack of all trades. I do this and I do this, and I do this, and I do this. And you might do all of those things, but all of those things really discredit you. And so you really have to say, where's my best opportunity? Who are the people I wanna reach on here? And then you establish yourself as an expert for those people. Does it mean if you're a fitness coach, you can't sell your supplements when you start working with those clients? Of course you can, but you don't need to broadcast that on LinkedIn, because guess what? If someone reaches out to me and they say, oh, I sell supplements, I am gonna go. No Thank you. Not interested, right? But if they're a fitness professional and they look like they're doing big things, you know, I'll probably connect with them. And so that's what you have to realize. So don't look like a jack of all trades. Make sure you establish yourself in the right way. But you really have to, oh, go ahead. What's the

Isar Meitis: 26:58

practicality of it? What do you mean by establish myself the right way? How do people know? In the context of LinkedIn? Mm-hmm, who I am, what I do. And, and, and you said 70 to 80% connection rate, which is obviously extremely high. Can you give some practical tips on. What do you send in your actual outbound messages? Like what kinda like a general message looks like to get that kind of respond, and B, is what happens there. Like where do you send people, what else do you need setup?

Ann Carden: 27:31

Yeah. So first of all, if you want, you have to, you have to define what are you trying to accomplish on LinkedIn and who are you trying to reach and for what. What is your end game there. You know, if you are going, if you wanna go for speaking engagements and you wanna connect with the decision makers for events and for conferences. You need a strategy for that. Everything that you have on your profile should look like. I'm a keynote speaker, this is what I've done. The pictures, you show things, you know, you show all, you establish all of that credibility as a speaker if that is your end game. If you're going for C, you know, for C-Suite, for ceo. Establish that show, you know, show pictures of you working with c with C-Suite, show pictures of you working with teams, show pictures of you. I mean, again, elevating that authority. make sure that's in your headline, who you work with, what, what problem you solve, what you do. All of that is part of that foundation. for high level CEOs. Excuse me one second. I have to cough. No. So annoying. Okay. For high level CEOs, they're not hanging out on LinkedIn. They do look at content. They will, if you connect with these people, if you go do the outbound work to connect with them, they will come into your world, but they're not hanging out there. So they may not even see a live stream, but you can certainly reach out to them and share something of value that would be relevant. This is the key. It's relevant to them. And so you ask me what types of messages. I don't wanna go into that. And the reason is there's no one size fits all there. We use a different message. I help my clients customize the messages that are going to get that response and or they're gonna get those connections. They're gonna get people to be like, I, wow, I wanna talk to you about this. So if I give a blanket message, that's what the spammer marketing people. Yeah, I don't teach that. So, but, but I,

Isar Meitis: 29:44

but let's dissect that for a minute, right? I, first of all, I love what you're saying because I get probably 60% of the messages and the connections I get on LinkedIn, and it's just like the next message. Like, oh, I have this and that. I think this would be awesome for you. Like, you don't even know my business, or what do I do? Or what my thing, like how can you tell me? So it's horrible. I agree with you a hundred percent. You, you, you mentioned the world relevance, right? It has to be relevant to what. Like when I craft my message, mm-hmm. what am I looking for? Hence, What do I then write when I find the thing I'm looking

Ann Carden: 30:21

for? Yeah, so this is a great question because this is where a lot of people drop the ball. When I say you have to be relevant, you have to understand your market. You have to understand what are they going through right now, what are the issues they're facing? I mean, you can do research a lot of times. You can see what is going on out there, and you know what tech CEOs are going through right now. We're getting ready to go. Supposedly a downturn economy. By the way, if you're an entrepreneur, this does not matter to you because you create your own economy. But regardless, people are going to be thinking, oh, we're in a downturn economy. You have to speak to that. You have to understand that those are real fears and those are things that people, those are real objections that people are going to have to buying your services or not wanting to invest right now or waiting. Here's a perfect example. People right now, we we're film, you know, we're doing this, I say filming, we're, we're doing this podcast during the holidays, right? A lot of people lay back and they take off during the holidays. And so I, one of the things that I could speak to is why this would be a really important thing to do right now so that you are ready in January, because if you get it in place now you're gonna, you will actually be able to, to do better and make more. So that would be just an example, but that's what I'm talking about. Understand what your clients. Your ideal clients are thinking, understand what they're going through, speak to those things, overcome their objections before they even object. Like know what those things are. That's what I'm talking about with relevance.

Isar Meitis: 32:02

So you're saying the message, going back to what we basically goes back to the thing we talked about in the beginning, which is understanding your clients, understanding what they need, understanding what the gaps they currently have. Yes. And write a message that brings value that way. Yes. Yes. What. Quote unquote, the call to action of that. Is it just to connect on LinkedIn? Is it connect? Check, like what's, is there another call to action other than a connection in the first message that you recommend most of the time?

Ann Carden: 32:32

Well, once again, it really depends. If you're going for a, let's say a high level ceo, they're like, get to the point, why are you connecting? Okay, so here's an example. I have a client that was not getting really any traction on LinkedIn. She was doing all the stuff. She was very consistent, but she wasn't really getting traction. And the reason is she wasn't positioned right. This was before I worked with her. She wasn't positioned right, so LinkedIn really wasn't doing much for her, but she was there and she was doing all the work. When we started working together and we completely repositioned her, we discovered that LinkedIn is going to be a better fit for her to find partnerships. So we repositioned her as the person that a certain industry, a certain niche would want to partner with because she would compliment their business and they, she could feed them business. They could feed her business. So from that standpoint, that is her whole strategy. Well, when we put that in place, Initial message that she reached out with was, it was spoke to, that we compliment each other's businesses. We could be referral partners. I would love to set up a call with you. I would love to connect, set up a call with you and see how we can maybe develop a, you know, a partnership. And she got. Tons of connections. She said, oh my gosh, I can't even believe these people are just connecting with me. All these people. And she was selective about who she was going after. She knew exactly who she was looking for, where they would be in the right place to be able to refer the right people to her. And so that's an example of how you can use LinkedIn. You can use it in a lot of ways. I, I will tell you some, a funny story. So when I first started, My podcast. I wanted to just get it going and so at that time I used an automation tool. Now, LinkedIn does not. I know a lot of people use them. LinkedIn has gotten stricter and stricter around automation and now you can. You really are. At risk to get shut down if you're not very, very careful. But I was using an automation tool, so I actually curated a list of all of my perfect ideal clients that I wanted to build relationships with and put'em on my podcast. And I reached out and I automated, and I said, I looked at what you did. I would love to have you on my podcast. I think you could bring a lot of value to my audience. And overnight I had. People like 81 or 82 people say, I would love to do that. Yes, let's connect now. I don't recommend that at all because I didn't qualify them. It wasn't the right, it was just a poor strategy. That was a very long time ago. But that's an example. That would be an example of value. Like when I reach out and ask someone to be on my podcast, they never say no. I mean, they hardly ever say no. So that's one way you can use LinkedIn is to be very strategic in the people that you wanna connect with and build a relationship with. And you know, what is the reason for that relationship. But that's one strategy I teach my clients. So you're showing up with value, you're showing up, you're inviting them, you're not selling anything.

Isar Meitis: 35:44

Brilliant. Two, three points I want to touch on. One is show up with value. So think about what value you can provide to that particular individual and lead with that. So this could be, be a guest on my podcast is value. You need to have a podcast for that obviously. But, That's a way to provide value. I have potential clients for you through referrals. Maybe you have some For me. This is a great way to provide value because I'm committing to potentially giving you something without you committing to giving me anything back unless it's gonna work out. So that's another way to provide value. So you, you gave a few examples on how to lead with value. Mm-hmm. The second thing that I really like is the whole idea of, let's call it the holistic approach to this whole thing. Right. So you mentioned that multiple times you wanna speak on stages, you want to connect with people outbound, you want to wait for inbound, you want to have your profile set up correctly. You want to potentially have a podcast like when you do all these things. Each and every one of the other things can be the point of value. You offer the other person, right? I'm writing a book, right? I want to interview you for the book. I absolutely, you know, there's so many ways where you can provide value to people, and guess what people want. Everyone wants to be heard. They want to sound their opinion. And if you're giving them a platform to do that, just by doing that, you're providing the value and having a higher chance that they will connect with you. So I love what you're saying. I wanna. Flip question because all of this is really great strategy for outbound. What do you do with inbound? Like somebody connects with you. Mm-hmm. what are your steps that you do? And in order to decide when to respond, what To respond, how to respond?

Ann Carden: 37:28

Yeah, that's a great question. So at first you would just wanna be genuine, and when people connect with me, one of the things that we do is I like to engage on their profile. I like to engage on their content, show my support, and then I, I even will send them a thank you. You know, in our inbox, and I might ask them a question to just get the conversation started. And that could be, that could just be a question about something they posted, a question about, where are they lo you know, like, I see you're located in such and such. Have you always lived there? I mean, any. Thing that if you, the thing that people, they make social media so hard is think about it as networking online. You truly are networking with people. It's no different than going out. I used to do a lot of networking and I would go out and I would meet people and, Hey, tell me about what you do. Tell me about what I do. You know, I'll tell you about what I do and, and is. You know, is there a reason for us to take this to a deeper relationship, a deeper connection, deeper relationship, maybe another call, maybe another talk, whatever that is. Same thing online. You're doing the same thing. You're really getting to know people. They treat them like people. They're people, you know. If they do something great, support them. Say, I love the article you wrote. That was excellent. You know, just people just treat people like people. That's. And so all of that opens the door and gets people feeling good about making that connection with you. you know, I have to say Iza, and you have probably done it too. I hired all those marketers that oh, taught the six messages and oh my gosh, I could just cringe. Now when I think about how I probably hurt my. All those years ago when I was doing that kind of spammy stuff. another thing that you can do that I do is I do events on LinkedIn, for example. I set up events that would be relevant to my audience. And if they say they want to come, you know, they click the I, you know, attend button. Yeah. I will reach out to them a lot of times and start the conversation, oh, I. You're interested in my event. You know, all, there's so many ways. There are just so many ways that you can start the conversation.

Isar Meitis: 39:41

Brilliant. Phenomenal. I, I wanna touch again on a few small points, from a very tactical perspective. One is two little tricks about when you set events on your profile on LinkedIn. If you're not doing it, it's a great way again, to connect with people and mentioned one that is very, very important. If you send invitations to a thousand people linked. To an event that happens next Tuesday at 2:00 PM 20 will show up, out of 50 that would say they're interested and the other nine 50 will not even respond. Right? But that means you have 30 people that you can connect with that showed interest in what you're doing. Yeah, that if you just do the event, you just ignored the other 30 people, which is more than half the people who said they're interested in the topic and so many people just do that. They're like, okay, just 10 people showed up. That's fine. I'm okay with 10 people. So that's one thing. The other thing that relates to that, again, from a very tactical perspective, and I don't know if you, if you knew that if you run your event from your business, Instead of from your personal account. So you can run an event. The same event. Right. It's the same exact thing, same setup. There's no difference in effort. If you run it from a business account, LinkedIn will give you their, their emails addresses. Yes. Which means now you can go and add them to. Any email platform or scheduling platform or stuff like that, that will send them an actual meeting, invites to be on their calendar, that will show which significant increases the, the chances of them showing up. Because otherwise you just clicked on something or LinkedIn, like they click 50 others, it's not showing up anywhere. But if you're then putting this in, And using their emails or taking their, their contact information, putting it in Zoom or anything like that, you will now send them an email with a meeting in that invite that will show up on their calendars. So there's a lot of these little tactical tricks that you can do in order to enhance the effectiveness of the efforts you're already doing.

Ann Carden: 41:40

Yeah, I'll share another secret with you too. Please do that. I do. So one of the, one of the things that I, I do and I have my clients do is we are always typically driving people to do things, either a workshop or some kind of a bigger engagement with us, or a call. And so one of the strategies we use is we set up the LinkedIn event for our work. People say they wanna come, but then they, they actually have to apply to come to the workshop and then we reach out to them in the inbox and give them the link to go apply because most people don't read. Right? And then that also opens the conversation and we fill workshops like that. So, That's another thing. But if people raise their hand, you know you have the right people. Now I will say, some people just go down and click, you know, they think they'll click except accept, accept, accept. So you will have some people that go, I didn't apply to your event. yes you did. Go look. You know, but, so you will get some of that. But for the most, It opens up the conversation and now you can go in and you can have, you know, that conversation in the inbox, Hey, thanks for saying you wanna attend my, you know, my upcoming three hour virtual event at the end of the month, or whatever. And so that's another strategy we use. So there's actually a lot of different moving parts that we use, but at the end of the day, it brings you the right people, and that's really what you're trying to do.

Isar Meitis: 43:07

And this was such a great conversation, both from a strategy perspective, all the way to really cool tactical things that we geeked about. If people wanna find more about you, follow you, join your events, work with you, what are the best ways to do

Ann Carden: 43:23

that? Yeah, so I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram. LinkedIn is probably, and I have a, a really robust YouTube channel. So if you are wanting to really learn a lot about what, you know, what I teach and how I help people go to my YouTube channel, but LinkedIn is probably one of the best places to connect with me and. I welcome, you know, connections with anyone that says, Hey, I heard you, I heard you on AAR's podcast, and I, you know, I would love to connect, and I even welcome if they wanna ask questions, anything like that. I am a really open giving person. That doesn't mean I give away all of my advice for free. I'm not saying that. but I am very open to answer questions and if you follow me, you'll get lots of content and lots of help, with just what I put out there for. All my articles and everything. So amazing.

Isar Meitis: 44:15

And it's just Anne Cardin, right? C a r d e n is the way to find you in all these places?

Ann Carden: 44:19

Yes. In fact, you can Google me and you can go, if you just Google my name, my LinkedIn will come up. My Facebook will come up, my YouTube, my podcast will come up. So you'll have no trouble finding me because I practice what I preach and. Yeah, you can, you can connect with me, but if you do wanna book a call, if you want some help in your business or maybe you want some help with your LinkedIn getting that to work better and you, you are interested in getting some help and investing in some help, then you can book a strategy call with me@acarden.com.

Isar Meitis: 44:51

Ann, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate you sharing

Ann Carden: 44:56

the time. You are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Isar Meitis: 45:02

What a great conversation with Ann. I really appreciate you took the time and shared with me and with you all of her knowledge in this topic. She's obviously very knowledgeable and has helped a lot of people with this. If you want similar content, I've done multiple episodes on content creation, community creation, authority building. I wanna take you back to a very old episode that you may or may not go back to because it was recorded pretty far in the past, and that's episode 43 with the BIZ Bros. They are experts in repurposing content or so taking the content you're creating anyway and creating micro pieces of content from it, and I'm sure you can learn a lot. It's jam packed with practical tips. And until next time, have an amazing week.