What LinkedIn does for you, they issue you a bleached white skeleton of yourself.
So they issue that to you and then what is expected is over time.
It is your job to add muscle, tendance.
If you want a high-performing team, you have to really learn to listen.
Bigger the project and the more involved and the different teams that are involved,
you've got to keep all stakeholders up to date on what's going on.
You don't really need to train a high-performing team. What you have to do is try to
listen and bring out the best in every individual and how they can contribute to the team.
The most important thing about LinkedIn is your profile because if you've been in time
on other stuff, so people want to come back and say, "Okay, let me see who this Melissa person is."
How you tell the story and that's why storytelling is so important and the structure to it.
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast.
I'm your host, Melissa Arskot and today I'm excited to talk with Joseph Frankie III,
a West Point graduate, a combat veteran, a coach, and a LinkedIn thought leader.
Welcome to the show, Joe. Hey, Melissa, thanks for having me.
I'm so excited to talk to you. It's, I love your background and your career.
You have such a diverse background from military and corporate,
in your experience, what are some key ingredients of a high-performing team and leadership?
I always go back to some of the basics, right? If you want a high-performing team,
you have to really learn to listen, okay? Because you don't really need to train a high-performing team.
What you have to do is try to listen and bring out the best in every individual and how they can
contribute to the team. And then secondly, you know, if you're choosing or trying to make a team,
always try to pick people that are much smarter than me because if I'm the smartest guy in the room,
we have a problem. So true. I think that's a great, a great nugget is up to level your circle.
And one of the things I love and appreciate about you is your adaptability and how many times
you've changed and learned in this fast-paced world we're all living in. So from your perspective,
how can leaders build those teams without compromising, you know, their relationships internally,
changing circumstances, AI technology, all the things that leaders are up against these days were
remote employees. So how can they really build teams in a way where everybody's working together and
evolving? Well, I think we're right back to listening, right? Because the reason somebody can't
produce is maybe they need some technology on their end. If they're remote workers, maybe they need
some help with this or that timing of when people are available, you know, in today's world makes a
big difference. I mean, some people are mourning people, some people are, you know, get their
creativity later on. And the question becomes is how adaptable can we, the team, be to try to
accommodate everybody? And you can't do everything. And all the team needs to recognize is that we're all
trying, you know, to do the best things that we can do to make the team productive. In other words,
in other words, you know, people do not wake up in the morning and say, I want to go to work and do
a bad job. You know, so usually there's a lot of things going on. In fact, you know, most recent
topic that I was in Austin was about how reorganizations are doing. And you know, that has to do with,
you know, your particular team. I've got three different clients right now that are going through
reorganization or whatever euphemism you want to label that with. But stuff is a foot. It's changing,
you know, the organization is going to re-adapt, you know, take resources either in labor, money,
and, you know, redevote that into areas that they think are prudent. And two of those are just absolute
disasters, you know, and, you know, what I'm trying to do with the clients is extricate them, get
another opportunity because they just realize that this, you know, their team's not productive,
they've got no communication, they don't know where the organization is headed, they don't know if
they're part of it, all that kind of stuff. In contrast to another one where it's really going well,
all the leadership's involved at all levels, they're transparent in their communications, you know,
that's hard work to be transparent on multiple levels where, you know, you're getting it from the
company, you're getting basically the same message, both verbally and in writing from, you know,
your supervisors and they're actually letting the rank and file make decisions on how they need to
adapt and change to achieve those particular objectives. It's not easy, it's hard work and everybody's
got to be involved, but that's one example. Yeah, that's a really good example. I know that you've worked
on projects that are worth billion the dollars and lead teams, 50,000 or more. In your experience,
what is one of the biggest leadership challenges that you faced and what did you learn from it?
I think communication is the biggest challenge, the bigger the project and the more involved and
the different teams that are involved, you've got to keep all stakeholders, you know, up to date on
what's going on and, you know, even with all the King's horses and all the King's men, you know,
you're still going to fail at that in certain areas, but the fact that you try to use multiple
communication channels to keep stuff up to date is absolutely key. And the bigger the project,
the harder it is to measure whether you're making any difference or you're moving this
thing along because the more strategic it is, I mean, you probably can't measure it for a year.
You know, it's just, you know, the smaller it gets, you can see stuff happen, you know, relatively
quickly, but the bigger it is, the harder it is to put in, what are the metrics? I mean, how are we
moving this needle? You know, and naturally leadership always wants these reports on, yeah,
hey, we've invested all this money, what are we going to get from it? And you've really got to be
a good communicator to keep everybody, you know, together and heading in the right directions.
If you don't put those aspects in place before you start, then you start the project and then
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Yeah, and I think that's a really good thing to unpack communication. We're in a really fast-paced
world. You know, there's constant pop-ups, there's constant things coming at us. A lot of time
is I find, I sit in meetings and, you know, all here people say, "Okay, you got it go." And I'm,
you know, I'm looking at my notepad and I'm like, "Okay, I think I got it." And like you said,
a lot is lost. The way that people are communicating now is, I think of it like a pie chart. We're getting
a lot of information, but maybe not a full piece of the pie chart to understand what our part is
with whatever we're being talked to at. And so a lot of times I like to finish communication
and revisit, you know, "John, you're doing this, Susie, you're doing that." Any questions, if you
need support, reach out to me. And I like to make sure everyone's clear, but I know, like you said,
for myself, I've been a part of those many, many meetings where I looked out on my paper and I think
to myself, I don't, I don't, I don't got it. I don't understand. I think I understand, but,
you know, one of the things I learned is if you don't understand and you're not really good at
communication, we need to practice it. I think a lot of times when people are working remote,
or they're working, you know, in silos, not in a team constantly, we kind of lose some of those
communication skills. So I like to suggest to people go to networking events, get in places where
you're using that dialogue to communicate with people. And so I want to kind of unpack what you
said a little bit about, you know, making sure stakeholders are aware, like in that example,
I look down at my pad and I know that I don't understand what's going on, but I know my piece of the
puzzle is going to affect all the people that are involved in that team. So from your perspective,
share it with our listeners some ways that people can make sure that they're, you know,
they're collaborating with those stakeholders that you mentioned.
Well, I think you mentioned a very, very important tool, which I,
the military calls it a back brief. You sat through a mission order, you know,
you know, and it's got a very structured standard to it, you know, we called it the five-paragraph order,
where you, all right, what's the mission? Here's the things that affect it. Here's the logistics,
here's the communication, all those kind of things. But you've listened to that. And so I think
good leaders say, okay, you know, we put this plan mission together, okay, what did you hear from that?
And the back brief is, okay, that you're listening to what their interpretation is. And just like you
say, it gets straightened out, you know, right then and there. The other technique that I
saw one of the CEOs I worked for, especially the upper leadership from seven in the morning to 715
was a stand-up and there was about six of us in there. And he just went around to all six of us and
we each had about a minute. And, you know, if we needed something from him, that was the time to,
you know, to kind of say that. And we didn't even sit down. You were in there with your three-by-five
card or your pad, you know, on what you were going to say. And the boy had to be condensed, you know, because
you know, we were off to the races. But what I found is as everybody got conditioned, used to
gosh, what a saving of time, you know, a lot of that stuff, you know, because you and I were talking a
little bit earlier, but I mean, you can get a lot of communication really quick face-to-face
because you've got all the non-verbal communication, everything's working and just think about how much
email we'd have to put together. And then send it to the collective group before you take it to the
leader, right? And that's a really good point. I want to separate what you're saying and unpack that.
So face-to-face, we're able to use all of our senses. We can tell tone, we can tell body language,
we can understand people much better than email. I know I've been the recipient of emails that,
you know, I didn't take offense to and I'd have a peer call me and say, oh my god, can you believe
that email? And I'm, and what I didn't take offense to was short succinct to the point. Other people did,
and they extracted from an email, a motion, and things that I believe they should have, because
email is much different with emotions than standing in front of a person. So I always tell people,
if you get an email, don't read into a get clarification or call up that person on the phone or
call them up in teams. And you can use more of your senses versus words. Like people like me, I'm a
very, I'm an engineer, brain kind of, kind of gal. I'm not wordy in email, but a lot of other people may
be wordy and clearly able to communicate what they, what their ask is. So I want to also mention
another really great point that you met made a lot of, a lot of them meet in these meetings. Like you
said, 60 seconds to debrief a lot of these meetings that I've been sitting in over the years. The
meat of the meeting is towards the end where there's action, there's clarity. And so I find a lot of
times I'll do exactly what we just talked about. You know, here's your piece, here's your piece,
everybody's clear. And I'm not kidding you minutes later, I'll get a team's message or an email,
hey, what was my, what was my peace? So for all the people that are not able to focus for 30 minutes
or an hour, really paying attention to the end and making sure before you hang up that call that
you're clear and not be fearful to ask during that call because your leaders and your
superiors may be on to other things that they might not be able to circle back with you. And so like
you said, getting your 60 second point to the St. in organized is going to pay so much
down the road in your career. Well, and secondly, you know, you're in a group setting,
you know, you're either prepared or you're not and it becomes painfully obvious to the casual
observer, you know. So always tell people, I said, you know, you know, you're going to a meeting,
I mean, you got to be ready and have your best put forward. And that's planning from your end,
that because you have no idea when you get in the meeting that you might be reacting to something
you didn't know about. I mean, that's your first thing. And I always say, they say, well,
you know, they say, hey, Joe, you're going to the meeting with what you hope to accomplish. And a lot
of times I say, I'm just going to go there. My job is to not let anybody take my stuff, you know,
because you know, meetings deal with resources, right?
100% yeah. So I said, I said, you know, I'm going to attend that meeting. Well, why don't you send
someone so? And I said, no, at that level, if somebody else is not there, I don't mind taking his
or her stuff either. If that's what, you know, we're dividing the pie here on something.
Yeah, it's a really good point is just collaboration, right? And communication, I think, you know,
it's something we all need to work at. And I find that the older I get, the more things are going
on in my brain between family and kids and extracurricular activity, you know, my aging parents and
everything I've got going on in my life. So really being clear as we pivot from different facets of
our life and communicating with, you know, the ones that we love and the ones that we work with is
going to be very important. Speaking of communications, I want to talk a little bit about LinkedIn,
all things LinkedIn. I know myself, you know, I was this flow adopter of LinkedIn. And now I'm fast
and furious on LinkedIn. And I know you're a LinkedIn thought leader and you've coached people on LinkedIn.
I want to get your perspective on why people still struggle to leverage LinkedIn and maybe some
advice for people on ways they can leverage LinkedIn. The way I look at LinkedIn from
from this standpoint, when we went day one, when we first got on it, whenever that day was for you,
really all to get on LinkedIn, what you need is your name and like, a job. I mean, it's pretty basic,
you know, and then the idea is, okay, we got you here. And, you know, at some point in time,
you're going to build this out. So I look at it is what LinkedIn does for you, they issue you a
bleached white skeleton of yourself, okay? Just like the one we saw in the sixth grade science thing
that hangs on the side of the science room, you know. And so they issue that to you. And then what
is expected is over time. It is your job to add muscle ligaments, tendons. And if you think about
how many different muscles there are in your body, that's how many different things you can add
onto a LinkedIn profile. I mean, people basically, I'd say, 95% of the people who use LinkedIn,
like the above the fold of the front page of the Wall Street Journal. But LinkedIn can be
the entire Wall Street Journal. In other words, above the fold, below the fold pages, you know,
two through 17, op-ed section, you know, finance section, etc, etc, etc. And so,
I'm a big believer in to using it with all its capability because it gives you the ability
to tell story after story that you solve problems. Because if you can't solve problems,
I mean, there's no reason for you to be employed because what is an employer want or if you as an
entrepreneur, what are you doing? I mean, you are solving, you know, some sort of customer satisfaction
objective. Otherwise, there's no purpose. And so LinkedIn gives you all these other pages, all these
other sections to tell those stories and many times are not used. I mean, for example,
you're using the volunteer section. I mean, you've got maybe 16, 17 things that, you know, you're
volunteering on. And you know, that is great because a lot of people are not using it to that depth.
But if I was going to say something for you, I said the volunteer section gives you 2,000 characters
to tell what you do as a volunteer, how you made a difference. You know, who, what, when, where,
why, how, and the metrics, you know, as Rudyard Kipling would say, those are the five people you need
to know. So, those questions. So, I look at LinkedIn as a place to tell story after story.
And you say, well, okay, if I tell all those stories that, you know, there's a lot of stuff there.
And what I'm saying is, how does LinkedIn work? You're in a content war with whoever you think your
peer is. And the better content you have and the more content that you have, the higher you come up
in a search. And it's all about the algorithm. And some people say, well, I don't understand about
that. And I say, well, let me give you a visual. And he says, okay, I says, right now you're a coronavirus.
I'm a coronavirus. We got a little sphere, right? Yeah, I got that. And I said, so every story you tell,
you add a little mushroom on your sphere. So, do you want to be a mushroom? I mean, do you want to be
a coronavirus with one sphere? It means you have to go find the one in 100,000 that you link up with,
or do you want to have a sphere with an infinite number of mushrooms where you can affect one out of 10
people? Because you never know what rings somebody's bell. For example, and I learned this years ago,
I've this guy contacted me, he said, Joe, he said, you know, I found you and, you know, I want you to see if
you can solve a problem. I said, well, how did you find me? And he said, well, I found you on LinkedIn
because you're a blood donor. You know, so I'm thinking, okay, that's in my volunteer section. I mean,
what relevance is that? And he said, Joe, I mean, I have a daughter and she requires frequent blood
transfusions. So what I've done is I've decided that, you know, if I can, I'm going to do business
with blood donors. My point is, nowhere else than the planet, would anybody know that I'm a blood donor
except on a LinkedIn profile? And so the point I try to say everybody is you have your own perception
of what you think is important. That is not relevant to another human being. Everybody's
got a different bell that rings them and motivates them to do stuff. And my point is tell story after
story and you'll, you have a better chance of finding somebody. You and I normally would love to do
that in conversation. Okay, but that's that's additive, right? We're having a conversation,
that's the way it's been since the payroll, right? But now you have this exponential ability to have
coffee 137 times a day virtually. And you're not even there and you don't even know what's happening.
And my point is show up, you know, well dressed groomed like you're going to meet somebody. Or if you're
just going to have this profile that's kind of like you're in beach shorts with a torn shirt and
going to show up in flip-flops, you know, just put your best foot forward just bottom line.
Yeah, that's a really great point, you know, that the analogy when you were saying this birds of a
feather flock together, I forget who says that, said that saying, but that's an exact really good point
that you were saying is people, you know, I know when I started opening myself up on LinkedIn,
people, I never knew you played sports. I never knew you had kids. I never knew.
And people's perspective changed literally overnight when I started putting stuff online. And it's funny,
people, you know, my LinkedIn has changed year over year over year based on the people that engage
with me or what they ask for me and kind of how I live my life. So I've really listened in to the people
that follow me and what they want to hear. And so I love that you're you're talking about that. I want to
talk a little bit about your LinkedIn, your book LinkedIn, the five minute drill. Can you break down
for our executives that are listening, networking and into a simple process and maybe walk us through
some steps professionals can take? Who are those kind of skeletons on LinkedIn and they do not
have anything to date on there? I know, you know, for me, it was being comfortable being vulnerable
about who I am. So I had to take that big leap of faith to put myself out there, but maybe you
can walk us through those steps leaders can take with their LinkedIn profile. Okay, so LinkedIn,
the five minute drill for executive networking success, you know, the hardest thing was to make it
an hour read. So Lori Ruff and I said, we wanted a person to be able to get on a airplane,
you know, they're there for an hour, they read the book and they could actually take action. So the first
part of the book is for the executives that hate LinkedIn, they don't want to do it, you know, but hey,
they they they smart enough to know that they have to be out there, right? I mean, somebody's telling
them, hey, sir, you know, you're the front, you're the front leading face of this organization,
you know, you got to be out here here in, you know, other social media. So, but the bottom line
was to give them a five minute drill to go into LinkedIn so that their presence was known, right?
Even if it wasn't, you know, they're adding all this content. Let's face it, the top five percent of
CEOs, they have marketing departments and, you know, there is professional people doing all that,
but for the rest of us mere mortals out of here, you know, we got, we got to saddle up and ride the
horse, you know? So what it was was a step by step thing of how to go into LinkedIn and was a five minute
checklist, you know, and I had one executive call me up and he said, Joe, this takes more than five
minutes and I said, well, you're not following, you're not following the checklist. And he goes,
what do you mean? I said, it says go here, do this, go here, do this, go here, do this. And I said,
you try it for two weeks and you don't do anything other than that checklist. And he calls me back and
he said, Joe, you're right. He said, but once I get in there, I want to do other stuff. I said,
that's your decision, you know, everybody wanted a five minute drill so they didn't have any of their
time taken up. But, you know, what I would say to you is you might need a five-dryl minute drill in
the morning, you know, if you want to do one midday or not fine or one at the end of the day and what
happened is, you know, you've got that day kind of covered. So in other words, they're looking at,
okay, who said something on their posts, they're like it, somebody, one of their friends
another CEO said something so maybe you want to go like it or if you're knowledgeable, you make a one
sentence comment or something like that. So it was just the rudimentary things of how to go in there
if you're not LinkedIn savvy without, you know, doing something stupid. I look at LinkedIn when you
first get on it, you know, you're kind of wheeled in it like a sword, you know, it's too handed, it's
not very daft and you get a little bit smarter with it. Now we've got a saber that we can move around.
But where you're headed in the power of LinkedIn is when you can use it like a scalpel.
But what we have is too many people using a sword to do brain surgery.
And, you know, you get the results of when you use a sword to do brain surgery. So my point is,
when LinkedIn's come a long way, it's almost self teaching now, you know, with all the little suggested
tools in there, you can ask a little question over here. I mean, when we first got on that, you just
kind of had to not get out and learn by trial and error. But now it's very educational. There's a lot of
information out there, you know, for example, our book in the back, you know, okay, you want to learn
more. Here's a number of other, you know, resources to hone the tool. What's funny is I wrote this book
for the executives and it's been used in high school business classes.
And that's a really good place for it to start. I think starting young with your branding is
really important. I think our, I know my branding has changed all the time through my life in my
career, where I started at, at high school in, in the banking space, I'm year the way from that. And so
I think getting out there and explaining the different facets of who you are and what you're
made of on the inside, we forget sometimes. Oh, wow, back then I used to do that. I totally forgot
about it. But if there's not a place that you're putting off it, as we get older and older,
we have more things in our mind and more things going on, we tend to forget some things. I want to talk
a little bit. You made a comment about the five minute drill. So for me, it was hard to do my five
minutes, 10 minutes every day that I was on social. So I bundle all my drills on the weekend and get
all my stuff that I'm posting for the next week done on the weekend. So when I hit Monday for work,
I'm ready to go with all my activities that I'm doing. And so if you're a person that can't do it,
you know, right before you start the day or at the end of the day for the next day,
organize it in a way that works best for your schedule. I think, you know, I correlated to exercising
for me. I used to be like a nighttime exerciseer and now with children, I don't have the cycles to
exercise it. And I'm now morning exerciseer. So with social, being able to pivot on what works best
for you is going to be key and sustaining your presence on the line. I want to follow up a question
for you and just get your perspective on the way you think people are misusing LinkedIn and how
they can fix it. Well, the most important thing I think about LinkedIn is your profile. I mean, you know,
it's kind of like if you're going to run a race, you got to start at the beginning of the race, right?
There's a beginning and an end. So I think the most important thing is spend the time on your profile
because if you spend time on other stuff, so people want to come back and say, okay, let me see who
this Melissa person is, right? Well, you know, do you do you want to be in flip flops, you know, a
torn shirt and tennis shoes or, you know, I mean, you already want to be AJ square-to-way business person
and you know, you can see it from it's all laid out here for you. So I think the biggest problem
people have is they look at LinkedIn, right? And the way LinkedIn is organized like anything that's in
depth is it was LinkedIn 101, 201, 301, 401, 501, 601. And I get all these organizations call me say,
"Jo, I want you to come here. We're going to give you this insane amount of money and I want you to
give them to our, you know, I want you to train them on LinkedIn." And I say, "Save your money." I said,
"I'm not going to, I'm going to do that." He said, "But I will work with the individuals." He said,
"Well, why do you do that?" I said, "I can give an orientation on LinkedIn." But unless we're going to
put all the 101 people in a room, the 201 people in a room, in the 301, and oh, by the way, nobody needs
more than 301 to get what they want. You know, there's PhD level LinkedIn out there, but, you know,
so what? I mean, for people to get what they want is right at the cost of what I call 301.
And if you went to give any subject where somebody is going to give you training and you're in
this room, you know, for an hour, and oh, by the way, you already know that stuff six ways from Sunday.
I mean, your productivity would be best placed elsewhere. And secondly, you get people in there that
don't even have a LinkedIn profile versus the people that are at the 401 level want to ask you,
you know, exponential stuff about the algorithm, you know, the person that doesn't even have a profile
is it? That's not me. So I think that's a very individual thing and everybody comes up the way
they're going to. And he said, "Well, I mean, LinkedIn is LinkedIn." I said, "No, it's not." I said,
LinkedIn is IQ and it's EQ. And they said, "Well, what's this EQ stuff?" And I said, "Look,
when you give somebody a resume, it's a black and white snapshot of who they are and it's about 95% IQ."
Right? This is what, "Hey, this is what you've done. This is the problems you've solved, all this stuff."
But LinkedIn is an oil portrait of yourself. It's not a black and white photograph.
It's an oil portrait. It's in color. There's brush strokes on it. There's hue. There's tint.
All of the kind of things that you want to describe about yourself, it gives you the capability to do it.
Just like the example I give where the CEO calls me up because I'm a blood donor, that's not because
I solved a problem in business. That's because emotionally I chose to donate blood, right? It's an
emotional connection that he made with me that started a conversation, which we might lead to business
may not. And over the last 10 years, that's been two different people. And that's where I really got,
it really reinforced in me is everything that you know you do that's important to you or whatever
you want to put out there, put out there because you have no clue what rings somebody else's bell.
And see, we have this filter that we're going to put up and say, "Well, this is what I think."
You know, well, it's not important what you think. It's what other people find. For example,
another example, I'd say the most money that I've ever made off of LinkedIn comes from my
high school education entry.
And people say, "Well, why is that important?" And it's because people want to go back and,
"Okay, what's the lowest common denominator that we all had?" Well, if we're on LinkedIn,
we graduate from high school because you got to be able to read and write, you know, to be on LinkedIn.
And then it's all that other stuff like I'll get somebody call me and say, "Hey Joe, I was
offensive center in high school." Well, the only place they could know that is it's on LinkedIn
profile. "Hey, I got my pilot's license when I went to high school. Hey, you know, I got my scuba diving
certification, you know, when I was in high school." I did poetry interpretation in high school. I
played tennis, all those kind of things. So education gives you a thousand characters in the description
block, you know, and the idea is if LinkedIn gives me, you know, a bone off that skeleton, then it's my job,
you know, to put muscle ligaments and tendons there. And so what you have is a lot of people on LinkedIn,
they might have a, you know, beautiful head of hair and all this stuff, but then they got a
bleached white skeleton. The idea is, you know, that I suggest, you know, because there's
counter arguments to this, too. Some people say, "All you need is a list of your titles and responsibility,
and that's all you need there." And I'd say, "Well, you know, this algorithm, if other people got the
same thing you've got, and they've got some meat hung there, then you've come up higher because this
thing's looking for words, right?" And, you know, a noun in a verb is the basic element that it's
searching for, the action in a description. And noun in verbs make up sentences, sentences make up
paragraphs, and paragraphs tell a story. So I think people just ought to tell story after story,
about the problems they solve. And that's what happens to me. Somebody calls me up and said, "Jo,
you know, you know, you probably've handled one of the most unstructured projects in the world,
and I have the same thing. I don't know if you can help me, but let's have a discussion." I said,
"What makes you think I can help you?" He said, "Well, you know, you handled the
Kursk Russian submarine rescue operation from a transportation, and the story was interesting,
because you didn't have any policy in dealing with Russian." You know, there's no manual that says,
"Okay, this is how we're going to rescue this Russian submarine." So all the people that worked on it,
and, you know, I'm just one, but my job was to help in the transportation of assets and people
to get to a certain place. Bottom line is they never called and asked for that. They let those people
die down there, which is a different story. But my point is, that story is on my LinkedIn profile
in a project, because that's what it was. It was a Kursk Russian submarine rescue operation project.
It had a start, it had an end, and there was a story. And so people look at that and say, "Well,
I have this really complicated project. Can you help me with this?" And some I could. And some,
you know, I said, "Hey, I don't have that depth of experience. Why don't you go over here?"
But there was never any tool before LinkedIn where you can hang that out there,
and somebody could find it. And what you really wanting LinkedIn is somebody to message you or call you,
and either you can help them or not. And if I can't help them, I refer them to who I think
can help them. But from that perspective, I think it's a world-class, too. Second piece of that is
it's owned by Microsoft. So it's not going to ever be short of any money when it needs to, okay,
this is a really good competing piece like Linda, you know, went out there and bought the education piece
and made that LinkedIn education piece. Yeah, and I love that your gear examples. Another example I
want to leave with the listeners is a lot of times I'll hear from people that say, "Gosh, I put
all this work. I put my five minutes in. I'm doing all the work. I'm creating the post. I'm
attaching a picture and I'm not getting any engagement." So they quit. And so I always correlate LinkedIn
and posting like I do the gym. You go to the gym and if you go for a day and you don't get,
you know, you don't drop the weight, you don't gain the muscle, do you quit exercising?
You're not going to be able to gain momentum on your social if you quit. And I promise you to all
the listeners, the people that you think are not paying attention, they are paying attention.
Your colleagues are paying attention. They may not be engaging or interacting or liking or
commenting, but they're paying attention. And over time, when people like you were mentioning, when
people think of, "Oh, I need this problem solved," you become the expert that can solve those problems.
So it's really just a tweak of the mindset. And I think don't quit, don't give up, keep doing it.
It's worth your time. I know I want to pivot. I have to talk about AI now with social media and
all these tools that are being used now. You know, AI is the hottest topic now. I don't see
everyone on my scrolls has something AI or machine learning in it. So I want to get your
perspective on how these tools like chat GPT are going to help or not help. Leaders and executives
build their personal brands and connect with other opportunities. Can you share some insights?
Well, I can. In fact, I got a call yesterday on a Sunday from a client.
I mean, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around what had happened to her.
So basically, the power of AI is, I have been working with her trying to get,
let me just frame this a little bit. Okay, she was born in another country. She's a US citizen and here,
but there's a culture difference. No matter what, you grew up as a child someplace else.
You know, it's a different mindset. So I really had to work with her to get all this
stuff that she had done, you know, and it wasn't natural. You know, to me, LinkedIn naturally works with
American people because American people designed it, right? And they're adapting it. But the bottom
line is this. So we had to get the things that she had done, you know, a lot of it was in another country.
And none of that was merchandise. In other words, she didn't put on there that, you know, she was the head
of engineering, you know, in this country and that a panel had chosen to be the president of this
engineering council, which did engineering decisions for major stuff like bridges and, you know,
things like that. And none of that was on her LinkedIn profile. And I said, you know, hey, you
you don't have the option here, you know, you're, you're in a world-class perspective, but nobody sees that.
So we're still in the process. So what had happened to her is this whole thing, which I'm still trying
to get a deep brief on. And if I understood her correctly, I mean, this system went through everything
that was ever on her. You know, now we're talking chat GPT find everything on Suzy Smith, you know,
specifically by name, arrayed it, you know, task organized it into what it wanted to know. And a
AI person gave her a phone call that talked to her in a way based on her personality style.
And so like I said, I think, you know, the Wild West is out there. I mean, I haven't wrapped my head
around that, but my point is everything going out here is available, right? So I think whether you like
it or not, this is just an example of somebody's looking for somebody to solve a problem. They're using
a tool, whether that be people or systems. And the more that you have out there, specifically,
that you solve problems, a greater your chance of coming up to the top of that pipe. You know,
because I do executive search and people will say, well, John, I don't want to put that out there.
I said, no, bro, I said, you'll come up three three 75 out of 400. And I'll never see.
He said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm going to deal with the top 40. I'm going to
search for people and I get the top 40. I kind of look at them. Okay, that doesn't work. This
works. Then I rearrange all those search words again and run it again and see who's in the top 40.
In the top 40 and 10 different searches, this is probably going to be about 15 of the same people.
And so to me, you have to win the quality content war, you know, on length and, you know, if you
want to be considered for somebody calling you, you know, to solve a problem or, you know, to get,
you know, important. Yeah, I agree with that. And I, you know, I want to kind of pivot a little bit
again in the closing kind of last pieces of our time together. I know this year is a year for so
many of career transitions, change personal growth. I know what I want to do now. I know you've coached
a lot of executives and military veterans who are transitioning into the private sector. And I
want to get your perspective on the mindset shift people need to make when moving from one career path
to another. Say they were in one industry and another or they were, they were working for a company
now, they're self-employed. Any kind of, kind of two parts of that. What's the biggest mind stuff,
just they need to make? And then the second piece of that, what's the biggest mistake people make in
doing that? Well, for example, let's take, okay, oil and gas industry is down. I mean, we're just
going to make that assumption. So now I'm a petroleum engineer and I want to go into mechanical
engineering or aeronautical engineering. Well, the shift is on your, on your LinkedIn profile,
about, you know, 60% of all engineering is engineering, right? Tell me problems. Yeah, so it's only
in the finesse type, you know, you have the specific thing. So you just change the stories that you tell
and how you solve the problem. You talk about the mechanical engineering story and solving a petroleum
engineering problem because when you when you get that engineering, I mean, aeronauticals is the same way.
I mean, it's really about structure, strength, you know, curves, all of those kind of things. And so
it's how you tell the story. And that's why storytelling is so important and the structure to it.
Because like, for example, in a project on LinkedIn, you've only got 2,000 characters. So I mean,
think about it. You got to say, who, what, when, where, how, and what the metrics were. And the other
thing that people don't realize about LinkedIn is what makes you different than somebody else that's
outstanding, you know, because I had this one guy came to me and he said, Hey, Joe, you know, I'm a
world class project manager and I'm just, you know, kind of floundering out here. And I said, okay,
let me take a look at your LinkedIn profile. He said, okay. And I said, well, I'm, I'm not going to
hire it yet. He goes, but Joe, you know me inside now. And I said, but that's the problem. I can't
sell you. I am an exactly recruiter and I can't sell you to a client. And he said, what are you talking
about? He said, well, I'm an outstanding engineer. I work with fortune. I mean, project manager to work
with these, you know, Forbes companies and all that kind of stuff. And I said, yeah. So your first
sentence in your bounce section just says, you're a great guy. I said, I see great guys and gals every day.
And I said, what it needs to say is in the last 12 years, I've handled seven projects with project
teams from five to 27 people on projects that were 1.3 million to 227 million dollars, you know,
and all of them were finished on time and under budget. Okay, that I can sell, you know, but if I'm
having to pull this out of you. And 10 years ago as an executive recruiter, I'd call and pull this
out of you today. If you're not show ready, we just go to the person that is because employers will
ask me, did you bring me the best? I said, I bring you the best that are ready for you.
Because I didn't bring them the best. I physically know people, but I don't have time to dress them,
you know, and make sure that they got their cleats at the soccer game and you know, that they
bring their jersey. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a really good point is, are you ready? Right? How
are you standing up against your your potential competitors? You know, with AI and everything these days,
one job might have 500 applicants or more depending on the job, right? So like you said, if you're not
show ready, the other 40 are, it's the 40 of you that are going to get looked at by the recruiter
and by the staffing manager. And so I love that. I'm going to use that. Are you show ready?
That's a career not had is performing, but Joe, this has been an incredible conversation. I thank you
so much for being here and sharing your insights with our listeners and to our listeners. If you
found today's episode valuable, please subscribe, share it with your listeners, leave a review,
and connect with Joe until next time. Keep leaning with impact, and that's the executive connect
podcast.