On this Rankable segment, iPullRank’s Senior Account Executive, Jarrett Thomas, will be joined by Alex B Sheridan, to discuss the topic,” How to Drive Leads on LinkedIn with Content”.

This is a very insightful segment where you will be able to truly understand the value of LinkedIn as a platform and how you can grow your audience on LinkedIn. Enjoy!

Feel free to connect and follow these two individuals and ask them anything about LinkedIn as they have been extremely successful in growing their LinkedIn connections and they genuinely enjoy building meaningful relationships!

Video Transcription:

Jarrett Thomas:

And we are back. Thank you for joining us today. We are here the Rankable series. I’m your host Jarrett Thomas, Senior Account Executive at iPullRank. I have my first guests here and I’m truly excited.I have my boy, good friend of mine, Alex B Sheridan man. How are you doing my brother? 

Alex B Sheridan:

What is up? I’m doing well. Doing well. 

Jarrett Thomas:

Good, good man. First and foremost, before we go into this, you know, we have a great segment lined up talking about how do you drive more leads on social? What are some of the things we’re doing on LinkedIn? You know, you’re one of my guys that I follow. Truly, man, I got you through LinkedIn video. So we ended up connecting and really building relationships. I’m excited for you to be the first guest and looking forward to you to share insights with others who may want to follow in and become a creator.

Alex B Sheridan:

I appreciate that, man. You know, I was thinking about it and I was like, how did we even get connected in the first place? Does anyone ever know how it first happens? It just kinda, you just ended up connecting. I see your posts like mine, but yeah, man, I’m excited. I appreciate it. 

Jarrett Thomas:

That’s how it should be, man. So I appreciate you man. Before we get into it, man, first and foremost, how are you doing, you know, with all the craziness, how are you doing? How are your loved ones? Everybody fine? 

Alex B Sheridan:

Yeah, man, I’m good. My two little ones are good. Two daughters, six and three, healthy, parents are healthy, friends are healthy. But it’s crazy, man. We’re all just kind of stir crazy. We’re all just ready to get back to it. 

But it’s fortunate that business has been pretty good because of what I do. It’s all digital. It’s all, you know, teaching people how to create content on LinkedIn, drive leads and that kind of stuff. And we all need that now more than we ever have. So yeah. Things are well, man, and I trust the same are with you, right?

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah, man, it’s still crazy in New York City, but luckily the numbers are going down. It’s still about around 200 per day, I think the depths are in terms of the official numbers. So it’s still kind of crazy scary. But, you know, luckily, you know, my family is good. I did have a few people that I knew that were affected by this, they lost their lives, you know, I’m blessed and fortunate to be here and you know, just prayers to everyone who’s battling with this thing, you know?

Alex B Sheridan:

Same, same brother.

Jarrett Thomas:

You know, and plus, happy mother’s day to all. Thank you for everybody joining us. You could be anywhere in the world, 

Alex B Sheridan:

Mothers, we love you, who wouldn’t be here without you. So thank you.

Jarrett Thomas:

To all the mothers, man. Like I know right now with this situation, I know my lady, she is the Sergeant, she’s the captain general of the house. Without her, things don’t move. 

Alex B Sheridan:

Yeah, dude. And I also think about the people that lost their mothers, that don’t have mothers. I also think about the people that want their mothers right now that this day is hard for them. So quick, shout out to all you people to that. Everyone out there, maybe this is a tougher day. We love you. 

Jarrett Thomas:

So that’s it man. That’s real man. So man, I’d love to get into it man. Like I said, we just want to keep this very conversational when we go through it man. So a good segue into this, I would love to know, you know, when was that moment that you realized that you’re going to take LinkedIn more seriously and you’re going to, you know, devote your time, energy and efforts there. So what was that moment like and what have been some of the results right now?

Alex B Sheridan:

Yep. So I was on a couple of different platforms, mainly Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook, obviously, and working a full time job. I’m trying to grow my side business, you know, I’m trying to make a lot of different things happen. I’m trying to be a good dad, all this stuff. 

And I finally got to a point where I was like, I’m like surface level, scratching the surface on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. But I don’t really feel like I’m making an impact in either one. I don’t really feel like I’m driving it home with one of those. So I decided to like, why don’t I just go all in on LinkedIn and I still do some things on Instagram and that kind of stuff, but I just made the decision late last year that I’m like I’m going all in on this thing and I’m actually going to build the community. 

I’m going to build a followership, I’m going to get to know people, I’m going to build relationships. I’m going to really make it something special and I’m going to put my content, my content is going to be geared towards that. And so yeah, late last year man, I made that switch and yeah and not that I’m encouraging people to only do one platform, cause if you’ve got the time to do a lot different ones, you can repurpose your content. That’s something I want to get into. Do things like this, repurpose it for different platforms. But, you got to look at your time and say how much time do I have? And work, where can I make the most impact with my time?

Jarrett Thomas:

That makes complete sense. I was kind of in a similar boat, but I’m curious being that you were doing on multiple platforms. Me personally, I was doing music and stuff like that, mostly on Instagram, Facebook, and those were, you know, people with friends, family, things like that. People will know me from that route. But business, I chose to go LinkedIn. So I’m curious to know why you chose LinkedIn as opposed to those others. Like why did you go full force on LinkedIn and not Instagram.

Alex B Sheridan:

I think quite honestly, to be straight up, how you post videos on Instagram is crazy, dude. They make it incredibly difficult for the things that I like to do with my videos. There’s just the formatting. Everything’s crazy. But that aside, truthfully, I actually saw a lot of opportunities on LinkedIn. I saw that one. I was like, okay, your organic growth is incredible. Like anyone that’s listening right now, you’re not doing anything with LinkedIn. You could start posting today or Monday or whenever it is. And if you’re consistent and you do the right things over time, you will grow your following way quicker than you would with Facebook or Instagram. 

Because the reality is you’ve got 680 million plus people on LinkedIn members on LinkedIn and 1% post once a week. So you’ve got all these eyeballs, man, you got all the attention. I mean, you know this and you’ve got very few people actually creating content. So I saw that and I saw that as an opportunity and I saw it as an opportunity to help other people with their LinkedIn marketing, drive leads, build a brand, that kind of stuff. So that’s kinda what drove it.

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah. I was in the same boat, man. I was doing research prior to coming to iPullrank. I was thinking of some ways of where, how can I bring value to the organization, right? So, you know, for those who don’t know, our founder Mike King, he’s an SEO expert. He’s very revered in the industry. He does a lot of key-note speaking, things like that. And I saw his following, he had close to 40, 50 thousand on Twitter. And I’m like, what can I do to bring value to the organization? Especially since I have a social media background. 

So I started doing some background digging and then I came across what you just said, right? How the platform is content deficient, right? So all these members, but nobody really posts. And I think the biggest problem about that is this giant misconception that you have to post a certain way on LinkedIn, right? And think of how LinkedIn was back in 2008, 2009, 2012, things like that. It was terrible. It was just you just post your company, you get no likes except for the dude down the vestibular system down the hall and just your coworkers. 

You’re not really driving any business. You’re not really, nobody really knows you. You think that posts with a suit and tie and be so buttoned up and so professional. It’s not like that. And I think that’s where people drop the ball. People like yourself see the opportunity and just say, Hey, I’m going to be myself. So that’s why I love your content.

Alex B Sheridan:

Well that’s right. I appreciate that. And that’s right. Like you hit it on the head. I had just an interview yesterday where someone was like, can I post entertaining or share personal stuff on LinkedIn? Like, it’s not Facebook. And I’m like, actually it’s not Facebook, but it’s become way more of a content driven platform than it was two, three, five, 10 years ago where it was like a workshop. It was like you post your resume, you’re trying to find a job, you’re trying to find hiring managers. 

Not that you can’t do that anymore cause you still can, but it’s much more of a content driven platform, which means people are there to consume some type of valuable content, whether that’s educational, entertaining, motivational, relatable, whatever it is. They’re on there to consume. So your strategy has to involve posting things that it’s going to hit home, they’re going to enjoy, they’re going to get value from because that’s who’s winning right now. It’s not getting on there as you know, and posts, here’s my company, here’s what we do, here’s what we’re hiring for it, contact me now. It just does not work.

Jarrett Thomas:

It won’t work. It doesn’t work. I actually posted it on this like a couple of weeks ago. It was like, all right, engagement might be as important as the content itself, right? 

Alex B Sheridan:

100%. 

Jarrett Thomas:

How do you expect to get the support if you’re not supporting others? Right. When they’re putting out the content, actually giving real feedback as opposed to, Hey, I think I like that, or great, we agree with you. You know, those types of posts, it’s fluffy. You know what I mean? But when I’ve actually, I forgot what post it was, but actually had a post to have like around 150 comments and it was around, um, you know, how to post on here, something, I forgot what it was, whether video or things like that, how to optimize video. And I had SEOs, content marketers, VPs, chiming in and it was a really active community conversation.

I was like, wow. You know what I mean? And I actually heard a phrase that stuck to me when I started getting on LinkedIn. And I always use this phrase, teach them how to fish and they’ll learn you sell fishing poles, love that one. So those evergreen, this is something I live by on LinkedIn or I live by, when it comes to content, you don’t have to sit there and be like, Hey, look, I’m a salesman, right? I know my stuff. I’ve been in the industry for about 10 years. But if I lead with that, who cares? Right? 

But if I say, Hey, I’m Jarrett the father two, the brother, you know what I mean? The person who overcame obstacles, right? To get here, I lost and failed and I’ve got fired. I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve been that guy. Right? And now I’m in a fortunate position where I can win because I’ve learned so much along the way. You know what I mean? And people will have champions, things like that. Nobody wants to say, Hey, I win all the time cause that’s not real.

Alex B Sheridan:

It’s not real, anyone with real success knows that’s not how you become successful, just from winning all the time. You do have to win but you fail a lot along the way and it’s what you do with failure. Do you learn from it? Do you move on? Do you get better? Because that’s what leads to success. But to your point, I mean, I’ve been saying that, Hey, your engagement is your secondary content, like primary content is what you post, whether it’s a video, whatever it is, your secondary content is your engagement with people because they get to see who you are. 

They get to see what you’re about. Do you leave an insightful comment? Do you add value in the poll? So it’s super important. You can’t just get on that platform. It’s like anything man, you can’t, do anything and just say, I’m going to take, take, take, take, take. And without giving, you have to give way more than you receive. And then you end up getting what you want.

Jarrett Thomas:

You hit it on the head. Man, I think I’ve gotten a majority of my followers just from comments like especially when at least the approach I used to take and still do some days, like say the Gary V’s, right? People who are going to post and get that really large engagement. Right? And if you have a really insightful post or comment on that post, right, you can get 20 to 50 likes just on your comment and then you just go onto your likes. Thank you. Thank you. Connect, connect, connect. Thank you. I like it. Appreciate you. And now you start building relationships from there over something that you didn’t even create.

Alex B Sheridan:

Yeah. You didn’t create the original content. And then what you do with that sometimes is you go, Oh, I was onto something here. Maybe I’ll create a post that’s geared towards that comment. So part of the ways that you come up with your content is you read the audience, you figure out what’s hitting home, I was going to say resonate. But that word is used 4 trillion times every day, “reverse engineer”, “pivot”.

Jarrett Thomas:

Oh my God, if I hear “pivot” one more time.

Alex B Sheridan:

It’s crazy. But it’s so true. You really gotta, I mean guys like us, we study this stuff. You know, we were talking about this earlier before we went live, but we’re studying what works, what doesn’t work, what are people you know, attracted to, what are they not attracted to and a lot of it’s that testing out.

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah, absolutely man. So I’m curious from you, man, you know, I’m a big fan of your video content, so I would love to know what the ideation process look like, from start to finish. How do you come up with your ideas and then from actual finish, what is your formula for promotion and distribution on LinkedIn, linke how do you get more engagement?

Alex B Sheridan:

Cool. So the ideas come from pretty much everywhere. Like, I may be at an interview type setting like this and we talk about something or someone asks a question and I’m like, Oh that’s great. That’s a common thread that people are asking. They’re curious about this. How do I take that? So I’ll jot things down. I got my iPhone, I’ve got my notes app, I’ll put ideas, I may be driving somewhere and I’m like, Oh shit. Like here’s an idea. Maybe I did a post and someone comments on it. Hey, I loved your post, but what about this? And I’m like, great, great thought. I’ll do a post on that. 

I’ll find things that are just dumb things that happen on LinkedIn. Like, you know, goofy stuff we were talking about earlier or like the goofy words that we use, like resonate and fricking reverse engineer and pivot too many times. And I’ll find something funny to do with that. Or the Bitcoin people that pitch you, pitch you, get you out of the gates, you know? And I’ll say, how do I take that? And I make it funny. And then I also turn into a learning lesson for people on how to actually DM somebody. 

So I think all of these little bits and pieces that I get feedback from, clients, calls, whatever, wherever it’s coming from, and then I’ll jot it all down and then I’ll kind of scrub through and I’m sitting by myself and say, okay, which one do I think my target audience, it would hit with, like they would care about it, would bring value to them. Once I figured that out, then I’m like, okay, now how am I going to set this up? What’s going to be the script? What’s going to be the setting? What’s the theme? What I want to get out of? Like, what do I want people to really, what’s the message? How do I want to deliver it? 

And you know how I roll, and I start putting it into my whole fricking, you know, entertaining twist on it and stuff. And then I’ll film it and then I go into the editing and I’ll put the titles, borders, all that type of stuff.

Jarrett Thomas:

Full treatments for everything, right? 

Alex B Sheridan:

Yep. Everything. Yep, and then it’s posting. So I mean if you talk about how to get a little bit more engagement, one, you have to be consistent and you have to think about who is your target audience and are you creating content that’s going to appeal to them. But you also have to think about the first, especially on video. A big mistake that I see people make is they, the first three to five seconds, they’re sitting back and they’re getting the camera situated and they’re like, Hey, it’s three seconds in. Hey, I’m Rob with Rob consulting services, people are gone, dude, flipping through their feed like this, Rob, you’re done. Your chance is over. 

So you gotta get right to it, man. You got to hit people, come out right out of the gate with, Hey, you’re struggling with this. I’m gonna talk about three things today that are gonna help you get better engagement on your videos. That’s the same with the sales copy. You got to have, you know, if you’re doing a text post, you gotta make sure the first couple of lines they don’t need to be click bait fake stuff, but they need to be stuff that’s going to intrigue somebody that’s going to get somebody interested in consuming the rest of that post. 

Jarrett Thomas:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m curious too man, I actually have so many different ways we could go from that. So in terms of like, cause engagement is a big thing, right? So one reason why I’m curious as to why you chose video as opposed to text paste post. Right? Because one thing with video, it’s really based on the engagement to really help boost your views, right? You can put a text based post out, it could do 10, 20, 30 thousand views and the more likes you get it’s going to get more eyeballs. 

But on video the engagement really helps it go more like I’ve got a video, I think my highest engaging video was like 1500 views. So I’m curious, how do you kind of balance that out? You know, cause dealing with the algorithm and all that stuff. So how do you still get it out there?

Alex B Sheridan:

The algorithm… I do pretty much all video these days because that’s kind of how my brands is built, around that and that I don’t think necessarily people have to do all video. But that’s just what I do. I look at as opposed to the views, the likes. Cause those are, you do want to look at those and it matters. But I try to like, a really successful post for me is like the engagement did, was there a conversation, was it meaningful, did we go back and forth, how many people commented on it? And then more importantly, did my DMs get hit up. 

I know it’s a good post. If I’m getting 50 to 20 leads, uh, based off my video that I did it cause people were like, yo, I saw your video and I was interested in that. I’m curious about what you do. How do you, how would you help somebody like this? I’m in the financial industry. How do you make that interesting? You know? And so I really try to look at that, but for me personally, video allows me to tell my story and unleash my creativity in a way that I don’t think for me personally, text or picture could do. So I think you also got to look at what are your strengths. You know?

And like if you’re a fantastic writer, you’re a great writer, do some text posts, you know, really good on camera, do some fricking videos, DMs, you know? like use what you got to your advantage. But I will say that video, just like we’re here now, man, we were just audio, or if we were like typing back and forth, which would be your Morris code back and forth, it would be a different experience, dude. It’d be a different experience. So seeing somebody, there’s some type of, I mean it’s a natural human connection that we all want. So there’s that element too.

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally agree with you, man. That’s the only reason. Plus I’m not really good at editing. I’m working on it with your help, of course.

Alex B Sheridan:

Everyone sucks in the beginning. I sat here for hours every night, just wanting to rip my hair out of my head cause it’s just like anything dude. It’s like it seems cool when you watch it and then you get in there and you’re like, wait, how do I format this? What is it?

Jarrett Thomas:

So what’s the biggest piece of advice or what platform would you advise somebody or recommend somebody to do to start if they want to do some video.

Alex B Sheridan:

Editing software wise? 

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah.

Alex B Sheridan:

I think it depends on if you want to do like on your laptop, your PC or you want to do like, you know, just on your phone. Some people are just like, I just want to stay on mobile. I’m not trying to get something too fancy, inshot is really good for the iPhone, inshot, It’s an app. You can pull up, you can do borders and that kind of stuff pretty easily. I use Filmora9, which is good cause I can, and you can do it for free, if you pay, I think it’s like 50 bucks a year. That’s it. So it’s not super expensive, you can do whatever you want on there, add the titles, the borders, the animations, all that. 

And then Adobe. Adobe is a great software system. I just, when I first started, I think what happened was I tried it, it was crazy complicated for me at that point. Now it probably wouldn’t be, but at that point it was, I tried Filmora9 I was like, Oh this just clicked a little bit more. So I stuck with it. But Adobe or Adobe has great products for a lot of different things. Or Filmora9 are the two ones that I, I know are really legit. 

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah. I kind of struggled with Adobe man. It’s like looking at pro tools for the first time. When you first record this, what is this? I don’t know. And I had a little trouble with that. I did try iMovie, it’s a little easier on the desktop and on the phone. iMovie through iPhone. So I tried that. That was really good, and then what other one? I think that’s the only ones I tried, man. I also tried the ones you recommended but inshot I ‘m definitely familiar with. So I’m definitely gonna look that up too man. 

And so what I’m thinking about, aside from the Gary V’s and some of the big people, you know, that we all know and the influencers and stuff like that, who are some of the regular people that help you or inspire you to post and things like that, you know, give us some love and shout them out and you know, who are some go tos?

Alex B Sheridan:

Dude, I think there’s a lot of people, like for me personally, I’m a big video guy, so like the Shay Rowbottom have been cool to watch. Jonathan Palmer, JP, Justin Reynolds, Jay Ray, my guys like those are all my homies. But you inspired me with your post too. Like, dude, there’s a ton. There’s a good, there’s a lot of good people on here post and some unique content and different content that actually works. And I think one of the cool things is, it’s like you get to go on here and tell your story, it’s your brand that you’re like, it’s your story. 

So the way I do it may be totally different from somebody else does it. But I appreciate that. You know like some people, so you bring your different style, you bring your strengths and your uniqueness to the table. You need a strategy, it’s good to have to know what works, what doesn’t work and have some guidance, know about your brand and that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, like everyone’s telling their story and we’re on here to try and make an impact and whatever works for you works.

Jarrett Thomas:

Absolutely. I think confidence goes a long way with that too, man. Cause I think for me personally when I started really taking off is when I started not to care. When I started not to care and just like the random thing that comes in your head, literally posted, texted up in like five minutes and just let it go. Don’t think twice of it. Those are the ones that got 10, 15, 20 thousand views. 

For me personally, I had, when I first started, when I came here and the first week of working at iPullRank. I started seeing that article in the LinkedIn editors. If you go on desktop, you’ll see those tools on the side feed, right? Clicked on it. I’m like, they’re talking about the retail apocalypse. And I ended up making a post about what are some things that retailers can do to better engage and drive more foot traffic.

And next thing you know, I’m picked up. I’m like, what? I’m running like a madman with my laptop. Like, look, yo, I made it! I haven’t gone there once. But just little things like that is, so just in case you don’t want to put your story out there, right? You might not want to be personal. Me personally, I do stories, I overcame certain things. Maybe how I failed the job. What did I learn from that experience? What did I use and apply to what I’m doing currently and things like that. 

But if you don’t want to do that, look at that feed, right? Pick a topic that you do feel comfortable with and put a post out. So if LinkedIn does pick you up, you have the ability to get up to 10 to even a hundred thousand viewers just from that one post. 

Alex B Sheridan:

Crazy man.

Jarrett Thomas:

And another thing that a lot of people I think sleep on, if you’re talking about like connecting with customers and stuff like that, happy birthdays.

Alex B Sheridan:

Yea dude, the change of jobs, for some reason is like a big one.

Jarrett Thomas:

I think those are good ways to build engagement with somebody. Actually had a mentor like that to do with giving me the cold shoulder for like five months. And then we’ve seen each other at social media week. I actually hit him with a happy birthday and then he’s like, yeah, my executive assistant is sending you times for next Tuesday.

Alex B Sheridan:

That’s awesome man, that’s great.

Jarrett Thomas:

And then he’s my mentor now. I mean I just spoke to him yesterday, man. Good friend of mine. And that’s how you build relationships man. So I’m curious too as to what you think has to be kind of near. I’d love to hear if anybody’s in there, you know, send the questions, we’d love to answer them live. What’s your take on engagement pods?

Alex B Sheridan:

Interesting man. So I know they’re super controversial, right? You know, I don’t strongly dislike them. I don’t strongly like them either. I’m kinda in the middle. But I mean I’ve been part of them before. A I have developed some good, some actually real relationships because of those pods that are still friends today that I’m not in the pods but we still talk. We’re still in a chat room every now and then we’ll shoot the shit. 

Jarrett Thomas:

Well what was the benefit of being in one? What was that experience like? Cause I’ve got invited to about several but I haven’t been in it. Right? We dislike doing stuff like that. So what was it like

Alex B Sheridan:

Well for me they’ve always been just a little bit unauthentic, for me personally, they’ve always been a little bit unauthentic. It was like forced engagement. I just never really felt good about it. So that’s why I got out a while back. But when I first jumped on LinkedIn and Instagram, I was on there because someone approached me. I had no clue what they were. And they were like, you want to be in our group? And I’m like, what do you mean your group? And they’re like, we post on each other’s stuff. And I’m like, Oh, that’s the thing. And she’s like, yeah, that’s the thing. 

But one of the benefits was it helped me in the beginning just learn different things about the algorithm. First hour you need to, you know, cause then it kicks it out to your secondary connections if it does well. And I learned some best practices and I made friends with these people. Not all of them, but like there’s a core five or six on that, we still talk today, we don’t post on each other’s stuff. But we’re still homies, man. So it’s been super cool. And obviously you can build engagement because when you post they comment on your stuff. Um,

I just, yeah, like I said, I think we’re all kind of in invisible pods anyways. If you do it the right way, like in your post, I’m like, Oh boy, I gotta come on Jarrett’s stuff. You know? And maybe I don’t get every post but I want to see it. I’m like, it’s usually a good piece of content because you’re putting it out there and I comment on your stuff the same way you see my videos. You’d be like my boy, I’m going to check this video out and see if I can get it. So we’re all kind of invisible, like I give, you give kind of things anyways. I just personally don’t think you need to force it, it’s awkward for me to be like I posted go comments like…

Jarrett Thomas:

yeah, I totally agree with that man. Cause I just think like you said, it’s inauthentic, right? If I have a bad piece of content, man, I’d rather you just scroll. Anybody, I want you to tell me like, damn Jarrett. Alright. Sometimes you shoot from 40 and might air ball, who gives, it is what it is. So I’d rather that. Then you just sit there and I’m sitting there, you know, put out a garbage piece of content and I got 100, 200 likes and now we’re just taking the phone and it’s like, what value is that bringing? I don’t know, I’m not stepping my game up.

Alex B Sheridan:

Yeah, that’s right dude. And the other thing that I actually psychologically don’t like about it is it forces you to be dependent. To have this crutch and to be honest with you, if people, like if they had to post without that pod, without tagging a bunch of people, whatever. It’s very uncomfortable for them and they don’t get an engagement. They’re like, Oh my God, my whole success is built around this pot and not really my content, which I just didn’t want to feel like that. I’m like, I want to build my following up the right way and have it because people genuinely enjoy my things and because I give so much, people are probably gonna give back when I post too. So yeah,

Jarrett Thomas:

That’s what it’s all about, man. I think that is the biggest thing. Right? Aside from, I was obviously being, you know, salespeople and us driving leads and having to drive revenue through social, right? It’s us being ourselves and I think it’s the relationships of the people who don’t even necessarily buy that mean everything to me. You know what I mean? It’s like,

Alex B Sheridan:

Absolutely dude, I feel like we can literally, I can just get a plane ticket. Not now, because we’re in a fricking quarantine. I could just get a plane ticket. I can pretty much fly anywhere in the country and in the world, pick my spots and I would have a couch to sleep on because I’ve met people in New Zealand and Australia, in New York and California in Denver. Like I just, we became friends and I hopefully like when I make my tours and do my visits that I can stop by and see these folks. But like that’s what’s cool about it man. 

Jarrett Thomas:

That’s the greatest feeling in the world, man, I got people from Houston, France, Germany, I have people from Switzerland, bro. Like, Hey, you inspire me and I’m just the guy from the Bronx, you know what I mean? You know, we’re just regular dudes, you know, we work really hard at what we do. We obviously, we get the knowledge, we do our insights, we do the research and make sure we are good at our crafts. But I couldn’t have imagined that, you know what I mean? 

Alex B Sheridan:

Some people, like I know everyone on LinkedIn right now is in the big stage of like, I’m not on here to grow my business. I’m here cause I care. All I do is care about people and stuff. And I get it, we’re all on here. We’ve got a purpose. Right. And if you don’t have a purpose, you probably should check out your purpose because it matters. It does matter. You need to be intentional. 

But one of the amazing things about if you do it the right way, all these relationships and the following and the fucking cool people that you meet, all that comes with it. If you do it the right way, it’s just like sales. It’s like, dude, I’m out here, I’ve got to provide, we got kids, I gotta grow my business. Like make no mistake about it. I am trying to grow my business. Like do not make any mistake about it. 

But I think doing that the right way means being authentic, means building relationships, means way more than I take from people way more. That’s the name of the game, man. Like figure out why you’re on here, but make sure the approach and you can do it the right way where it’s still a lot of fun and you connect with a ton of great people. There’s no shame in that.

Jarrett Thomas:

Yeah, I think they know and I think people appreciate that, right? Like, that’s why I tell people who have to or feel like they have to be buttoned up to do it or tell about their business. No, I’m going to post up some crab legs that I cooked last night. I’m going to put up what’s going on in the industry right now. I just saw a Travis Scott collab with fortnite. I’m going to get my insight there. I’m going to do a bunch of things right. I posted up pictures with my team. I’ve had the CEO of multibillion-dollar media companies like the post. 

It’s just being yourself right at the end of the day trying to sell. But I also have to differentiate myself from the million other people who are trying to sell to that person. Why connect with you by being a regular person, right? I do that. I am struggling during the COVID, right? I am doing this. Damn. I’m kinda down in the dumpster. I don’t feel it today. It’s okay. It’s okay to feel that way and then somebody might be feeling that same way, like dammit, Jarrett. That was pretty real. I kind of liked this dude. 

So when I do acts of something, if I get there in the DM, it’s, Oh Hey, it’s Jarrett. Yo, what’s up? How’s it going man? How’s your kids? Your case is doing great man. Appreciate you, you got time Tuesday? And I can’t tell you how many times that led to a meeting and that has led to late stage or a potential deal man. It’s like, why do you want to do cold email?

Alex B Sheridan:

Sometimes when I’ve had a, like last week or this week, I had a girl comment on my post and she’s commented a couple of times now just like a good comment. Like really showing her support, connected with her, trying to see her stuff, comment on her stuff and I should just comment like two or three times in a row and I hit her up with a video DM and I was like, Hey Mara. I was like, thank you so much for commenting on my posts. Like I really appreciate your support. Like I really appreciate you taking the time, watch the video and then drop a comment. It means the world to me. And that was it. 

And then she came back with like, we started conversing and then all of a sudden it’s leading to a zoom and all of a sudden now her partner at the company is, I’m connecting with them next week on a zoom. And so those kinds of things and like being genuine and being real and being a good human being. As crazy as it sounds, that goes a long way.

Jarrett Thomas:

Obviously if you’re an A-hole, this isn’t going to apply to you, right? Because no one is going to give a shit and it’s going to show. If you’re a good person, you’re trying to help. Obviously we do want to grow a business, but it’s been numerous times where I’ve been up one o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning, I’m pretty sure you’re sure. I mean, you do it too, or with somebody from Switzerland, Australia, and then you’re just sharing advice, not in for anything. 

You’re like, Hey, what if you did this or try this? This worked really well for me. And they’re like, Aw man, I can’t tell you how much it helped me. That means something. Right. Cause those are gonna to champion your stuff. Other people are gonna like your stuff. And those are the people that you’re going to have that, like you said, the couch to sleep on, when you do go to Switzerland, feel good about it, and that’s what matters. And then revenue will generate. 

Alex B Sheridan:

Yes, that’s right. Yeah. 

Jarrett Thomas:

We’ve got one minute left, man. I just want to tell you, bro. I thank you man. I appreciate the time. I love the conversation, man. I could keep going on with this. Yeah, we could keep going, but I know you gotta do the thing. So yeah, they coming up, got to do some cooking and all that stuff. Yes. I appreciate you my brother. Thank you. I know it’s gonna be many more. Please look out for some more content from me and Alex. We’re going to be doing some stuff coming up really, really soon, so stay tuned. So thank you again, my brother. Much love and have a great weekend.

Alex B Sheridan:

Have a great weekend. Have a good mother’s day.

Jarrett Thomas:

You too, brother.

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