Traci Scherck: Welcome to talent optimization how many of you utilize linkedin consistently to really build your network, but then you take that network.

Traci Scherck: off online into in person, so with us today, we have a really special guest.

Traci Scherck: and Joe is with us to talk about how we really utilize linkedin to do that he comes to us from both great experience from business writing from writing a book called high energy networking and.

Traci Scherck: he’s going to share a little bit of our motivation with us as we get started so Joe welcome to the show.

Joe Apfelbaum: Thank you so much for having me i’m really glad to be here i’m excited about the concept of inspiration of relationships of connection, and I think that people are going to get a lot out of this show so i’m excited about talking to you today Tracy.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely, so one of the things like it all the time, especially when i’m not working on linkedin is.

Traci Scherck: How do you actually use it to make meaningful authentic connections.

Joe Apfelbaum: When it comes to.

Traci Scherck: Are we going to spend the time on it right.

Joe Apfelbaum: yeah when it comes to using linkedin there’s two things there’s.

Joe Apfelbaum: Technically, how to use it, how to log in and click buttons and then they’re strategically how to use it.

Joe Apfelbaum: Most people they both don’t know how to use it technically and they don’t know how to use it strategically and as a result, they end up going in there and lurking, lurking means you’re just looking and you’re like watching in the dark.

Joe Apfelbaum: You know what I mean like.

Joe Apfelbaum: What am I doing here, I see a feed i’m not sure if I should like it, what if my manager sees it, what if somebody else sees it, what if what if I say the wrong thing i’m in a business platform I better keep quiet.

Joe Apfelbaum: So a lot of people are just it’s not inspiring not to be part of the conversation.

Joe Apfelbaum: it’s not aspiring just to kind of watch from the from the stands, we want to be in the game, we want to be playing the game.

Joe Apfelbaum: So building real relationships using linkedin does take knowing how to use it technically, but more importantly it’s 80% mindset 20% skill set it’s more importantly, like what do you want to achieve from this.

Joe Apfelbaum: If you’re a manager if you’re a professional in any role, you can benefit from networking and some of those benefits you don’t see right away it’s more long term.

Joe Apfelbaum: And some of those benefits is just feeling good in the moment feeling inspired when I have a conversation with another professional another peer, for example, I just had a conversation with five CEOs.

Joe Apfelbaum: guess, where I met them linkedin I said let’s all get together and have a zoom and talk about our challenges and support each other.

Joe Apfelbaum: And I left that conversation feeling changed feeling inspired feeling motivated, I felt so good about being part of that conversation, and I want you to feel that same feeling I want you to be inspired and I want you to lean into your relationships.

Traci Scherck: And thank you so much for sharing that because that at some.

Traci Scherck: You know of that inspiration, we all get inspired differently, and we all network and connect differently and that’s something that I think is incredibly incredibly important.

Traci Scherck: Not just for our managers, but for our staff right I just got off a call with an employee inside of an organization about hey how are you inspired by your team and why do you work here, and what he said to me, was they appreciate me.

Joe Apfelbaum: appreciation is so powerful when we teach people how to DM we teach them that that is a greeting feeding and meeting method.

Joe Apfelbaum: So, like you know building little car is greeting.

Joe Apfelbaum: And then feeding is showing appreciation asking questions where they’re getting to know people and then meeting is where you build where you actually get on the phone or take it offline.

Joe Apfelbaum: But, most people try to skip it and say let’s have a coffee but that’s not inspiring what’s inspiring is showing gratitude, if you want to be great be grateful.

Traci Scherck: Oh, I love that if you want to be great be grateful right and so often we miss that key point.

Traci Scherck: With our staff and as we’re not only inspiring our managers, but we’re inspiring the staff inside of our organizations.

Traci Scherck: And one of those key things with inspiring the staff inside of our organizations in our managers.

Traci Scherck: Is sharing those key items about that the way they want to be shared with so for some, if I were to post their picture all over linkedin and or invite them on the podcast that would not be the way that they would be inspired.

Traci Scherck: And they would be terrified others are like oh my gosh can I get there, how do I do it so i’m curious, how do you figure that out by networking on on linkedin and then taking that into real life.

Joe Apfelbaum: really getting to know your employees or your peers is really going to be the key networking and building relationships it’s not just about a transactional thing that i’ll do this for you and you do this for me.

Joe Apfelbaum: it’s more about really getting to know people and building a relationship something being there with somebody can save their life, sometimes saying hello to somebody can save their life.

Joe Apfelbaum: They say that just you know walking over to somebody and ask them how they’re doing could save them from committing suicide.

Joe Apfelbaum: So it’s really important for you to take a moment and just acknowledge people of their existence, the fact that they were alive.

Joe Apfelbaum: And also just getting to know what their preferences are are they allowed to do they like being out there are they more of an aquarius or I can server they like hiding under the rock and being more like a verb later like a personal interest.

Joe Apfelbaum: So getting to know your employees getting to know your peers getting to know other professionals will figure out what they’re into.

Joe Apfelbaum: And at that point, you can support them and give them what they want, everybody loves recognition, especially public recognition, not everybody wants to share their photo online.

Joe Apfelbaum: But everybody loves recognition, I think it was Napoleon hill know as Dale Carnegie said, and he wrote a book called how to win friends and influence people.

Joe Apfelbaum: And in that book he says that when you’re going fishing you don’t use strawberries and cream to catch the fish, he was worms same thing when human beings you don’t just use.

Joe Apfelbaum: Anything use appreciation, because every human being loves to be appreciated, because what you appreciate appreciates in value.

Joe Apfelbaum: If you want to appreciate, if you want to increase in value your relationships or even your plans.

Joe Apfelbaum: appreciate them, and if you appreciate them you’re going to do, and if you do it publicly it doesn’t have to be with a photo it could be hey giving somebody a shout out and on linkedin, you have the ability to get people shout out.

Joe Apfelbaum: that’s not just inspiring for yourself that you’re a giver it’s inspiring for them, but it’s also inspiring for the other employees that are watching.

Joe Apfelbaum: What happened if you have core values in your organization, for example, one of the things that you can do as a practice, and we do this in our organization.

Joe Apfelbaum: Is share publicly the stories of how the employees are conforming or living the core values of the organization which again is inspiring usually the core values is not something that’s aspirational it’s something that you’re experiencing right now.

Joe Apfelbaum: And that is inspiration when people are like oh wow you know our core value is amazing communication and this person went above and beyond, and customer service, and this is a story.

Joe Apfelbaum: And that inspires your clients and inspires your employees, but it also gives the organization exposure because whenever you post on linkedin.

Joe Apfelbaum: All the people that are connected to you have the opportunity to see that, on the linkedin feed so doing that continuously will help you be able to get more exposure, both internally and externally, and will also be able to inspire more people to do the same.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely, and one of the things that that you talk about a little bit is.

Traci Scherck: fulfillment right so we’re talking about inspiring individuals right but part of that is being fulfilled in the work that we’re doing you know, and you have this line success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.

Traci Scherck: And you know as we’re inspiring not only our managers and our teams and our families and all those things just by how we live our life every day.

Traci Scherck: If we’re not fulfilling those things and being fulfilled and what we’re doing that does create a void or a gap and you talked about some mental health things earlier so i’m curious what’s your take on that and what’s that distinction between that in person versus online.

Joe Apfelbaum: Well, I believe that people are much more persuasive in person than they are online actually did a study that came out that human beings are 34 times more persuasive more influential.

Joe Apfelbaum: When you are in person than through email or whatever so.

Joe Apfelbaum: Being in person, because only 7% of our communication is actually words the rest of its body language tone and everything else, and when when you’re in person who is also a certain level of energy exchange where you can feel someone’s energy someone’s presence.

Joe Apfelbaum: And so the whole concept of in person versus online in person definitely is going to trump every single time.

Joe Apfelbaum: But online is more about staying top of mind and connecting and keeping the connectivity going, you know what I always tell people is that digital marketing.

Joe Apfelbaum: serves a major major purpose, it allows us to create more trust it allows us to create a bond it doesn’t replace the offline connectivity or the phone connectivity or the zoom connectivity.

Joe Apfelbaum: But it does allow us to maintain the connectivity we call them weak ties.

Joe Apfelbaum: Throughout the process throughout the cycle, so you know let’s say you have 100 employees or 200 employees you can’t connect with every single one in person, all the time.

Joe Apfelbaum: But you can see, the people that are active online now in terms of mental health and fulfillment in general that you mentioned earlier, I believe that self expression is life.

Joe Apfelbaum: What does that mean that self expression is life we all have a need a basic human need to express our energy now some people express themselves through art.

Joe Apfelbaum: Some people express themselves through rapping some people express themselves through singing through dancing through writing.

Joe Apfelbaum: Through all different types of ways, through playing sports or whatever it is so there’s many different ways that you can actually express yourself.

Joe Apfelbaum: And linkedin gives you the ability to express yourself in the comments to express yourself in posts to express yourself in a business setting.

Joe Apfelbaum: So if you’re not expressing yourself, right now, you have the opportunity to allow your staff to do it, to give them a medium to do it, to show that your culture is an inspiring culture where people lean in.

Joe Apfelbaum: To the important topics that your business represents.

Joe Apfelbaum: And so, if you have people that are more confident, they have more trust that what they’re going to say is not going to hurt their career, it becomes a more inspiring environment where people start speaking up and people that speak up yeah.

Traci Scherck: yeah and that trust becomes really important right, and so a lot of our listeners are HR folks so how you write that social media policy becomes really important to this.

Traci Scherck: And how you’re encouraging that as well you know, and you had mentioned kind of the lurkers earlier and guess what even though only you know.

Traci Scherck: Only 7% comes through and writing guess what you’re providing visibility for those lurkers and you’re also allowing individuals to really see here’s what we’re doing and here’s how.

Traci Scherck: And just ensuring that the individuals that you’re posting on there who you’re talking about are the pictures that they actually want to be on there, and I think that that’s so incredibly important, because that self expression.

Traci Scherck: As you said, shows up in different ways, whether it’s online or in person inside of our organizations, as are chatting with our staff.

Joe Apfelbaum: And also doing like surveys and getting to know your employees and figuring out what is your preference would you like to be.

Joe Apfelbaum: On you know, by default, a lot of people are going to just say no to that because they’re like, if I have a choice of whether I can i’m going to be promoted online or not.

Joe Apfelbaum: i’d rather just not be promoted, you know, like people are pretty private or they’re scared 90% of people are afraid of public speaking.

Joe Apfelbaum: And that’s the same amount of people that are afraid of networking because networking is a form of public speaking, but as people build more trust.

Joe Apfelbaum: And, as they have more confidence in the organization and in your processes and in your systems and as they get educated on how to use linkedin and how it works and the benefits to their career.

Joe Apfelbaum: that’s why we go in and train teams on how to use linkedin on how to leverage linkedin whether it’s the HR team or the business development team or the account management team.

Joe Apfelbaum: Because that helps them be able to create more opportunities for the organization, we all have personal networks of 150 to 200 people, we all have a personal network.

Joe Apfelbaum: The question is, are you leveraging your personal network to help you, with your career and to help your organization or are you keeping like you know.

Joe Apfelbaum: church and state completely separate and you’re like my personal life my personal life and i’m not dealing it, but even in business.

Joe Apfelbaum: We get to meet vendors, we get to meet all different types of people and they’re looking at your staff online.

Joe Apfelbaum: they’re looking at your company, they can see who works there they can see if people have updated profiles, they can see if people are active.

Joe Apfelbaum: And if someone wants to acquire firm or, if you want to add more enterprise value it’s important for you to have a culture of transparency.

Joe Apfelbaum: A culture of connection a culture of people supporting each other and educating your employees and the staff members on how to do that on linkedin could be very, very useful.

Traci Scherck: You know so as you were chatting there a second the the picture that POPs in my mind, and there was a number of these around Christmas time.

Traci Scherck: It was here’s a picture of our staff that is zoom ready right so we’ve got the suit on top and we’ve got the yoga pants and the Hello kitty slippers on the bottom.

Traci Scherck: It right and it’s showing that vulnerability of guess what yes there’s times, where we’re show ready, but there’s also times, where you know what we just want to work comfortably and what we’re doing and that’s so incredibly important in.

Traci Scherck: In that and as we’re networking showing our whole selves and being authentic and what we’re doing.

Traci Scherck: Really allows us to build that trust within our team and inspires that team to also share with us because the more that we can connect with each other, the more trust we’re going to have when things don’t go right and guess what things don’t always go right.

Traci Scherck: They definitely yeah that they they just don’t and so you know there’s a key piece of accountability of what are those key things that we’re looking for.

Traci Scherck: that are important to the organization right, so one of the things we chat about with all of our clients is hey.

Traci Scherck: Every single organization has a business strategy, what is it, then what are those business outcomes that you are looking to achieve.

Traci Scherck: And you know linkedin can be a great use for hey how we achieve those business outcomes, especially if it’s in a sales role but.

Traci Scherck: Right now there’s so much that you can get from recruiting and just having some key information out there about your organization so i’m curious, how do you utilize accountability to get to those really important goals.

Joe Apfelbaum: Well, the way I utilize accountability is first figuring out what are my key performance indicators, what is Roi look like what do I want to achieve from this, what are the goals ultimately.

Joe Apfelbaum: It might be more employee engagement, it might be more business development, it might be more exposure or getting the employees to engage on the company page or whatever it is so figuring out.

Joe Apfelbaum: What the goal is and what we’re looking to achieve will help me, be able to determine how to create accountability to get closer to the goal.

Joe Apfelbaum: If I want to lose weight I want accountability to show up to run you know, three times a week and I want someone to hold me accountable for that, but if I don’t know what I want to achieve.

Joe Apfelbaum: And I don’t have a clear goal set up, and I also don’t have the technical tools are the strategies to do it chances of me engaging in and are very low.

Joe Apfelbaum: So what I always tell people is, if you want to have strong accountability, you have to have strong vision with.

Joe Apfelbaum: Very specific metrics and you have to have like a framework or education for the team.

Joe Apfelbaum: To be able to engage with that, and you know, the key is to keep things simple if you keep things too complicated, if you may overcome convoluted things.

Joe Apfelbaum: People are not going to engage with that, so I always like keeping things really, really simple like a simple rap beat you know I just you know.

Joe Apfelbaum: You know, really smooth getting down get down get down, just like that something like that just really, really smooth.

Traci Scherck: and showing kind of who you are and that you know your own thumbprint on exactly who you are and how you work right and.

Traci Scherck: every single one of us have those different personality styles and you did take the predictive index, and we know that you are an incredibly wide maverick correct.

Traci Scherck: Correct means you’re an out of the box thinker that wants to put your thumbprint on things, so your rap absolutely does it I love it so as we kind of start to kind of bring our conversation and what’s a key takeaway that you have for our executives and our CEOs listening in.

Joe Apfelbaum: Make sure that you train your team on what you want them to do with social media, if you have five employees or you have 1000 employees.

Joe Apfelbaum: Having a social media policy and then having training, along with your social media policy will help you be able to ensure that you’re not just the one driving marketing or driving recruiting or driving.

Joe Apfelbaum: Awareness for the company, but it’s really the people, the way that things changed in 2020 and 2022 and moving forward is that it used to be the voice was based on the media.

Joe Apfelbaum: But now the voice is based on the individuals, people can go up and make a tick tock that will go viral and their song becomes a number one bestseller song.

Joe Apfelbaum: Because they show it up, they leaned in your company success is going to be determined by the systems and processes you put in enabling your employees.

Joe Apfelbaum: To help you achieve your goal, so if your goal is to get more talent your employees can help you do that if your goal is to get more clients or to get better customer service.

Joe Apfelbaum: Your employees can help you do that, and so there’s a very, very underutilized.

Joe Apfelbaum: strategy to leverage your current people now there is a fear that a lot of people have that their employees are going to get poached if there’s exposure to their employees.

Joe Apfelbaum: So there’s two sides to the sword, and you can you know, have a really good culture where people even get offered to get post you’re not going to want to leave.

Joe Apfelbaum: that’s the goal not you’re keeping people there, because ultimately people can look, they can go to glass door, they can go online, they can see what you’re really about everything’s very transparent.

Joe Apfelbaum: So if you create systems and process if you don’t they say, if you don’t have a will there’s a will for you.

Joe Apfelbaum: If you don’t have an operating Agreement is an operating agreement for you, if you have a social media policy it’s the wild Wild West.

Joe Apfelbaum: And so, making sure that you educate your business development team you educate your marketing team you educate your recruiting team.

Joe Apfelbaum: On the best practices on what works what you expect of them what you’re looking for and then reward them for it and make sure that it’s aligned with your values and your mission it’ll help you move your organization forward.

Traci Scherck: awesome and what’s a takeaway that you have for HR folks listening in.

Joe Apfelbaum: For HR folks if you’re looking for more talent, make it really clear about what you’re looking for.

Joe Apfelbaum: A lot of them aren’t necessarily putting out there, what they’re looking for and they’re also not rewarding people for that activity.

Joe Apfelbaum: And the other thing is getting to know your staff like looking at their stuff on social media.

Joe Apfelbaum: reviewing their posts reviewing their activity with linkedin you can see person’s first name last name company name, where they worked where they went to school.

Joe Apfelbaum: But you could also see what they’re doing what they’re liking on and really getting to know people see you who are the people that want to be out there that want to be elevated survey them.

Joe Apfelbaum: get to know them and then elevate them by featuring them in your marketing by featuring them in your collateral there’s a lot of people that are.

Traci Scherck: If they want to be right.

Joe Apfelbaum: Right yeah if they want to be, of course.

Joe Apfelbaum: that’s why I say survey them get to know them and the people that actually want the exposure give it to them, because it not only will help the organization and also help them feel more inspired as well.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely in a couple I think was about a month ago now, on the podcast we brought on an employee he’s the senior yard guy.

Traci Scherck: At one of our clients and he shared about how he was inspired by some of the management changes and some of the talent optimization.

Traci Scherck: kind of practices that were woven into the organization.

Traci Scherck: And how important that was and, at the end of our conversation says me he was Tracy can you let me know when this goes, because I want to share it with all my friends and family right on social media, and you know.

Traci Scherck: We all want to be acknowledged for who we are and when we can create that culture it ripples throughout and it impacts, we attract whether its employees or clients.

Traci Scherck: or friends right into our lives so with that Thank you so much for joining us today.

Traci Scherck: And if you are curious for knowing a little bit more about you know we’ve talked about predictive index a little bit throughout our conversation today, and these different behavioral styles, we have that.

Traci Scherck: On our show notes, we also have some of the links to joe’s books and information, so if you’re interested in some of that linkedin training or some of that other information we have all of those things in the show notes as well.

Traci Scherck: So thank you so much for joining us today and we’ll see you next week.

Joe Apfelbaum: Thank you very much boom.