Karen Yankovich 0:01
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 107

Brian Fanzo 0:07
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl stop being the best kept secret in town learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:24
Hi, I’m Karen Yankovich, the host of the good girls get rich podcast and we’re at Episode 107. And this episode is brought to you by she’s linked up the LinkedIn marketing system that gets you on the phone consistently with your perfect people. We only open the doors to this course a few times a year The doors are open this week the week that this podcast is live so you check that out at she’s linked up calm if you check it out and we’re not currently don’t currently have the doors open up on the waitlist but go to she’s linked up calm and check it out. We have people that are having amazing successes as they go through this course, it’s affordable and it is chock full of amazingness. And we’re really excited that we’re welcoming some new people in for this year. So if you’ve listened to the show before, or if you love what you heard today, I love hearing from you. So make sure that you subscribe to this podcast on whatever pod catcher you’re listening to this on. And if you want to leave us a rating or review, that would be amazing. We love your five star reviews, that helps us get more visibility. And when you give us a rating and you tell us what you like about the show, then or review it tell us what you’d like to hear we can do more of that, right? So those are things that help us help you. So if you go to karenyankovich.com/107, you’ll see the blog for this episode, you’ll see all the links we talked about here today, you’ll see the link to the she’s linked up program so you can check that out. And you can check out all of the cool things that we’re going to share on the show today. We’ve got our second male guest ever of the she’s linked up the Good roads get rich podcast. Bryan Fanzo is on the show today and I really loved I love chatting with Brian always. But what I love what I wanted to do is just gush about LinkedIn with Brian today. And Brian’s really created an interesting process for himself. He’s a professional speaker, I’ll let him speak for himself, but he’s a professional speaker. He’s a full time paid, speaking is his full time job. And he uses LinkedIn to get those gigs. So those of you that are looking to do more speaking, those of you that maybe think that maybe you wanna start getting paid for more speaking engagements, you’re going to love this episode today. And even if it’s speaking, even if speaking is not what you’re looking for Brian’s energy around how he uses LinkedIn to accomplish his goals to get people to invest in him. You’re going to want to hear this so without further ado, Bryan Fanzo, okay, so we are here on good girls get rich today with our second male guest of all time here on good girls get rich. I have Brian Fanzo with us here today and I’m gonna let Brian introduce himself. But one of the reasons I wanted to have Brian on the show is because of I know he has a love for LinkedIn. And I thought it’d be fun to just have like a LinkedIn love fest. So I’m going to let Brian introduce himself. Brian, thanks so much for being here today.

Brian Fanzo 3:14
Thanks for having me. And I feel honored to be the second male guests. You know, I have a passionate love for female empowerment as a dad of three girls. It’s always exciting for me, I get to speak at some women experience events and so on and really, always fun to share my point of view and for the listeners, I you know, I’m a digital futurist and keynote speaker. And really what that means is, I try to help brands and audiences really prepare for tomorrow while marketing and operating their business today. And so keynote speaking is kind of my full time job covering a wide range of topics from social media, to digital marketing, to technology and where we’re going in the future and For me, it’s been a heck of a ride at since 2013. I’ve been the founder of I social fans and kind of worked with brands on lots of different projects. And I’ve actually been on LinkedIn since kind of the early days, not like the super early days. But I over the last couple years, it’s been the primary source for my leads, as well as primary source for a lot of the, you know, relationship building that I do on social and that’s saying a lot since I would say Twitter has always been my first love. Instagram is something I play on on a regular basis. And I like to say I’m on every social network with the goal of helping my clients pick the right one. And more often than not, LinkedIn is the one I recommend. So love this discussion. excited to talk.

Karen Yankovich 4:44
Yeah, I’m so glad to have you here. So digital futurist, I love that and I think you described it a little bit. But what I find interesting about this, Brian, what you just described, and what I know of you is that you know you you help your clients, right, you’ve got a big presence on the internet, you’re always talking People and connecting with people and building relationships with people and doing Twitter chats and all these other things. But your clients are not necessarily the entrepreneurs or the corporations that may be hold these events or Is that right? Am I do I have that right, like, tell me a little bit about, about how that fits together?

Brian Fanzo 5:16
Yeah, you have that right. Yeah, it’s an interesting mix. You know, I i’ve been actually, in the My background is technology. I worked in cyber security for the Department of Defense out of the Pentagon here in Washington DC for for nine years and then worked in the cloud computing space for a startup for a couple years. And all while kind of dabbling in marketing and social media. And it’s interesting for me, I was identified early on as a b2b technology influencer. And the thing that came to what a lot of these brands said is they knew they wanted they wanted to work with me so that they can reach the entrepreneur audience or the small business owner audience, but at the same time, my clients are that, you know, the enterprise tech or, you know, I get to speak in a wide range of topics. Excited, I’ve done everything from healthcare events, to insurance events, to marketing events. And really, for me, the The neat thing is, it’s really the same job I had when I worked in cyber security. I like to say I translate the geek speak. And really what that means is, I try to simplify the complex around change and technology, you know, like, my background is definitely unique in cyber security, and then cloud computing, and now then digital marketing. And really, but the similarity for me has truly been, you know, I love change, and I love technology, but I don’t believe either one of them is always necessary. I think it’s a matter of, you know, understanding the opportunities, understanding where we want to go while at the same time making the right strategic decisions for you today. So as much as I am, I chase every shiny object I’ve been testing out Tick Tock for the last 18 months or so. For the most part, I’m I’m trying to understand what the future is so that I can help my clients both the brands that That hire me to speak as well as the entrepreneurs that listen to my podcast and follow me on social, really to kind of simplify their lives. And it’s kind of the thing that I love to do. It’s the piece, it’s, you know, I like to say I love to embrace my FOMO that fear of missing out. And I hopefully make it easy for those that follow me to not have to have that fear of missing out, they get to kind of understand where we’re going and kind of plot a chart a path that makes a lot of sense.

Karen Yankovich 7:25
Very cool. Very cool. So, so I’ve seen your keynotes a couple of them and they’re great. I’m you do a great job with the keynote. And what I what you know what I love about what you do, because there’s a lot of like, Listen, I’m a speaker. Right? And I have, I have one, I have more than one talk, but I have one talk that is kind of like my, the forward facing talk. And that talk, I can tweak and change and modify for audiences. For the end of the day. It’s the same talk, right? It goes, I you know, it makes it easy for me to do that. And I think that that’s a lot of times what Entrepreneurs are taught entrepreneurs that are speakers. But as a keynote speaker, I feel like you can’t really do that. You really have to have unique creative talks for each stage that somebody’s putting you on. And I definitely do that from my keynotes. But I think that I’ve seen a couple of different talks to me when they all seem different to me. So what is your How do you? How do you do that? How do you leverage that?

Brian Fanzo 8:24
It’s kind of like the perfect is my dream job. I like to say, you know, it took me I didn’t really know that speaking was a profession until probably seven years ago. You know, I had been to lots of conferences and events. I didn’t really understand that model. But for me, I like to say I’m the president of team no niche, which means for me, I’ve never had I’ve never had just one niche I’ve, you know…

Karen Yankovich 8:46
I kind of want everybody to hold their ears but Okay, go ahead, keep going.

Brian Fanzo 8:49
Yes. But here’s the here’s the caveat to that. If someone has a niche, I recommend doubling down and owning it and I’m 100% bullish on that. But on the flip side there’s there’s plenty of us in the world where we haven’t found our niche yet, or we struggle just with one thing I was diagnosed ADHD at 31 years old. And, and part of that to me when I left the doctor’s office was, you know what I think differently, I operate differently. And part of that comes down to, I have lots of different passions and lots of things that I like to talk about and having my background being so diverse and then having the things I like to talk about being so diverse. It does give me an opportunity to really craft unique keynotes depending on the audience. And so, you know, I have a keynote, it’s probably what my most popular is called, press the damn button. And what press the damn button really is, is it’s a it’s a talk to help inspire people to put themselves out there, but I have a version of that talk that is truly face towards an entrepreneur. And I have I have a version of that talk that is face towards an internal company empowering employees empowering leaders, but at the same time I have, you know, a talk that it’s really a storytelling but I also have a Talk which is called shrink the distance which really focuses on how do we look at artificial intelligence augmented reality and virtual reality and not get overwhelmed by the shiny objects but set ourselves up to shrink the distance between us and our consumers using that tack and so I think a lot of it comes down to it fits my personality. It also gives me the opportunity to work with such fun and diverse community so I really enjoy it. But yeah, I am the one with no niche but I more than often I try to help people, you know, find success while exploring what their niches and then once they have their niche, I definitely recommend doubling down and owning that.

Karen Yankovich 10:37
Very cool. You know, it’s funny when I first started doing this work, I was kind of a little bit more all over the place. I certainly wasn’t focusing on solely LinkedIn I was doing you know, I was helping people with their digital marketing in general. And there was some Twitter strategy because like you I love Twitter, so doing some Twitter strategy and doing some Facebook strategy and an Instagram strategy and then I it was exhausting, because who can keep I just couldn’t keep up with all those things like I couldn’t keep up with. And I’m, I have a technology background. So I’m very comfortable with sitting in a meeting and somebody saying, you know, this training You’re doing well, they just announced that there’s a new technology that made it obsolete, right. So like I am, I don’t come from a world where like, I was really comfortable. I come from World War I had, like, I had to be dynamic, but holy crap, it was hard with social media. And finally, I got to the point where I’ve just got to get good at one thing, because I can’t be kind of good at a lot of things I’d rather be really good at. At one thing, which for me, ended up being LinkedIn. And for you ended up being just keynote talks out to inspire people how to use these tools in general, which I so you say you’re no niche, but your niche is really keynotes. Sure. Yeah.

Brian Fanzo 11:47
And I think for me, one of the things when it comes down to that is you do have to simplify what you’re offering is and simplify how people talk about you. And I think for me, a couple years ago, I was doing some a lot more content A lot more influencer work and I decided to make it simple and really the only way brands can work with me today is if they’re hiring me to speak at one of their events, some some companies create their own events for me some events, you’ll they’ll hire me for an event that’s 11 months out and then they’ll bring me in to do workshops or webinars. But you’re right i think that’s part of it is you know, less about I think having to, you know, if you find something that double down, do that, you know that that works. But truly simplifying your offering is, is probably one of the most important things you can do because it does, it makes it easier on yourself but it also makes it easier on those that are talking about you are those that are coming to want to work with you. So it’s something for me, that is, you know, I’d say I wish I understood that better seven years ago, but it’s great to kind of figure out over the last couple years.

Karen Yankovich 12:49
I you know what, Brian? I so hear you I remember about two maybe two and a half years ago, I was doing some work with social media and PR and we were ads program and I had a business partner who do all this stuff and I loved it. it, but I kind of got away from my LinkedIn roots a little bit, you know, shiny objects, whatever. And then I remember listening to somebody, somebody tagged me in a Facebook Live, because they were talking about LinkedIn. And when they saw that I jumped on, they were like, Oh, Karen Yankovich is here. She just LinkedIn. But she also does this and stuff and some stuff with PR right now. And I don’t know something about social media. And I immediately knew that I was killing myself. Like, I distinctly remember that moment of time as the moment in time that I thought, I gotta get out of this. I if people don’t if this is a person who’s been following me for years, and she doesn’t know what I do, how could people that don’t know me know what I do? You know, and so yeah, it’s so important. It’s so important,

Brian Fanzo 13:41
especially, you know, the world we’re in today is without question, you know, word of mouth and relationships are, how things are, are built. And, you know, I remember a couple really close friends and even one of them being a Hall of Fame speaker and, and he said, Hey, Brian, you know, I’ve recommended you to some event managers three or four times and just last week, you said, you know, it’s funny. I think I introduced you in a different way to all four. And at first I laughed. And then I said, well, could you tell me what those four were and as he explained them, he was correct. All four of them kind of kind of fit into who I was. But at the same time, it wasn’t not only was it not making it easy for him, but it was also probably confusing on the back end. And I think that is one thing we know today with so much noise and so many things that are out there, that the simpler you can make it for people to talk about you that the easier it is for you to grow your business via, you know, a lot of the things that work the best.

Karen Yankovich 14:29
Yeah, so one of the things you mentioned that the my favorite word, the R word and in this marketing relationships, and that’s really what I think. So my perspective and I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. My perspective is that at this moment in time, like I’ve been teaching LinkedIn forever, so it’s not like I jumped on the LinkedIn bandwagon, but I do think there is a little bit of a LinkedIn bandwagon right now. Because I think there’s so much noise that people are starting to be like, Oh my gosh, I can’t deal with this anymore. And like people are starting to recognize again, value of relationships. I mean, listen, I love when people reach out to me from Twitter and hire me. But if I waited on that I’d be working at Macy’s to keep my mortgage paid, right? Like, I love building. I know that relationships is what brings in the big money clients, to my business and the speaking engagements and the paid speaking engagements. And I think that, I think that we went through a little bit of a transition with How fun is all the social media, and I do love the visibility. But I think we’re starting to see that visibility alone doesn’t pay the bills. And that’s why I think people are starting to jump on the LinkedIn bandwagon a little bit more. What do you think?

Brian Fanzo 15:35
Yeah, you know, that’s a good point. I think, you know, I think so much was interesting with, you know, as a lot of these platforms, you know, let’s just say five years ago, were really taking off, you know, and LinkedIn being purchased by Microsoft was, I think, a big shift. You know, I think there was lots of plays, where it’s gonna be a content engine, and there’s gonna be news feeds and groups and a lot of things that are going on. And I think when you look at it, you know, Facebook was the cool thing to talk about. Twitter was the thing that was slightly diversity but allows you to reach all these audiences that you would have never reached anywhere else. Instagram became the fun sexy thing that you could put filters on it and really it limited how marketers can ruin you really the feed or ruin the platform itself. But I think from from day one, I think one of the things that I know you know, you but it’s something that I think is a lot of people don’t even realize especially those they’re jumping on the LinkedIn bandwagon now is LinkedIn more so than any other social network is one that is not, I wouldn’t say a slow churn, but it’s one where your relationships are built through your reputation you’re showing up and your longevity of being top of mind. And, you know, I think about it a lot when I when I was going through, you know, analyzing my leads, and I was working with a couple other speakers. And they’re like, Brian, I can’t believe how many people how many leads you’re getting on LinkedIn, you know, in 2018 2019 they’re like, What’s your secret? I was like, I started caring about LinkedIn in 2000. 14, right? Like, it was almost one of those things like I’ve been engaging and sharing there since my days of in cyber security and, and I think there’s also something to be said where they’re there to your point, there was a time where we were growing following because we thought a following is what we wanted. But I’m a person that I use social media, because I have a.com, not a.org I’m not, I’m not in it for vanity metrics. I’m not in it, for fame. And I truly believe in building a community and I love building community via Twitter and Instagram. And Facebook has its advantages as well. But there’s also a place in time to understand how to nurture relationships and really turn them into customers. And one of my favorite examples of that is when someone when I talk about a new keynote, that I’m giving on Instagram, let’s say I do an Instagram stories where I bring people behind the scenes of a brand new key keynote, and I do that a lot on Instagram stories. A lot of people that are following me are saying Brian, I love this. I can’t wait to see it. Let me know the next time you’re in town. And then when I post a video about that same keynote on LinkedIn, a lot of times the comments that I get are, Brian, this is a great keynote, how can I hire you to speak for my company? or How can I help you speak at this association that I work for? I think that little that little nuance is a big difference. Right? I think it’s not saying that LinkedIn replaces everything you do on Instagram. But there is something to said to be said about where do you reach the decision makers? on social media? Where do you connect with those that have a budget? You know, I believe most of the time, the leads that I get through Instagram are someone that has to advocate for me upwards versus the A lot of times the leads that I get on LinkedIn are Hey, I just talked to the event team that reports to me or I just talked to my, the CMO and we were in a board meeting together or even I’m, you know, they’re someone could be a lower in their company. And they’re like, Hey, I just tagged my CEO on it. And and I think it’s also a matter of Part of the reason that we have kind of this gold rush to LinkedIn is LinkedIn is a little bit of a late adopter for for a lot of trendy technologies. But the good news about that is we can kind of figure out what works and doesn’t work. And so when LinkedIn rolls something out, it does allow us to kind of fast forward adoption very easily as a creator. Now, I will tell you, the caveat is, I think educating your LinkedIn audience on these different things that come up is a very underrated skill set. And I think we do see a lot of, let’s say, social media creators jumping on LinkedIn. But I also believe these are a lot of them will leave LinkedIn very soon because they’re watching each other’s contents. And they’re not really understanding the education and the longevity play that exists in LinkedIn. And I think I’m okay with that. It takes it does get a little bit frustrating, I’m sure for you as well. But I think you know, the bottom line is there’s there’s an element of how do we get on this platform to create and then when people realize it’s A lot of hard work in education, and building relationships and nurturing those relationships, they’ll jump to the next shiny object, while the rest of us really buckle down and understand. This is where our customers are at. And this is where we need to focus on, you know, our initiatives moving forward.

Karen Yankovich 20:14
Oh my gosh, there’s so much there was so much gold and what you just said, I am so glad that this is something that is getting recorded for forever, because there’s so much we can pull out of that. And you know, I it What, what kind of makes me a little nuts is that I hear people all the time saying, I just don’t have time to do all the work that’s required on LinkedIn. And I know that I can pick up my phone, sit down on my couch, and then get on Facebook and look up and it’s 90 minutes later, you know, because I got sucked into a rabbit hole or even on Twitter or an Instagram and watching Instagram stories, people I don’t know, and what they were doing in their backyard yesterday, somehow that was more important to me than going on LinkedIn and creating a strategy. You know, who, you know who, who could be, you know, who could be paying clients for them. So I say all the time, people, I don’t even want to hear that you don’t have time for this because I don’t your real if you had a paycheck, you would be going to work every day. And you’d be finding the time to do these things. So make the time for yourself for your own business for your own career, and connect and have relationships with these people. And, and you know, yeah, does it take a little bit of work? Yeah. Is it a strategy? Yeah. Is it the long game? It is, but I would I would like to hear a little bit about your strategy. Do you have a strategy on LinkedIn? And if so, I’d love to hear a little bit about it.

Brian Fanzo 21:31
I do and I and for me, you know, when when I hear something like I don’t have the time for it, what I what I usually like to do is rather than saying that I have to make additional time, I like to look at what time they’re currently spending, how much time Are they you talking, you’re writing you’re adding leads to their CMS system? How much time Are they replying to emails where they can maybe prioritize, you know, some of the LinkedIn connections rather than some of the things that they’re they’re currently spending time on and I also believe in the world of LinkedIn, especially, you know, I look at LinkedIn, as a combination of off offline networking meets, you know, nurturing relationships of the days of the past. And so we will always block off our calendar for a happy hour if someone invites us. But there’s oftentimes in a happy hour, maybe one person that will, will have the conversation that could lead to a business decision. But if we look at LinkedIn, if we spend that same amount of time as a happy hour, on LinkedIn, we could have 1015 people that could see what we’re doing or how we’re doing it. So I think that’s a, I think it’s a big thing. You know, even one of the things for me, that I did last year was, I turned off notifications for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, on my phone. And the only notifications I got was LinkedIn. And that was a very strategic play, because I would oftentimes find myself like you said, into Instagram or into Twitter, and these are platforms that I enjoy. But when I had a spare moment, I would also find myself in those platforms. And so what I decided to do was Well, I’m gonna be interrupted and I will have notifications on for just LinkedIn. So not only will it will remind me to dive back into LinkedIn, but also kind of set my prioritization of what things I should care about at what moments right. And so that was a, that was a big piece for me. And, and for me, my LinkedIn strategy is, you know, I, I create podcast I host two podcasts, I’m launching a new podcast next month as well. And a lot of my podcasts ends up being my sales and lead generation. But I also create a lot of content, I curate content, and so on LinkedIn, I’ve been really focused on doing at least one video a week that is dedicated 100% to LinkedIn. So oftentimes, I’ll take a clip from a podcast or maybe a clip from a keynote and I’ll upload that to LinkedIn. I try to post you know, two things a day I, for me, mostly, that’s usually what works. Now I will say, that’s an expectation that I’ve built over the last five years, you know, that my audience kind of expects that usually it’s one post that Very, I’d say inspirational, it doesn’t have a link it doesn’t have a video. It’s more me conveying my own thought leadership, and then one post that’s either a link to a blog that I like or a video or a post. But each week, I’ve been working really hard to have a video that’s really dedicated just to LinkedIn. And, and so much so that when I start the video, I usually say what’s up LinkedIn? Like, that’s my, my opening. I love that. And, and part of that was because I started to get feedback from my LinkedIn community. They would say things like, Brian, I love that you created content for us. And what I noticed was, it wasn’t just marketers, it was a lot of the people that were in my network from cyber security and enterprise technology, IBM or as Adobe Dell, they would tell me, Brian, a lot of the people that we follow that are speakers or that are marketers, they they just kind of turned LinkedIn to the dumping grounds. They, they post a YouTube link, they they share all their random content there. And what they really liked was I was just customizing a video that was directly to them and I can tell you I was shooting it on my iPhone I was usually coming up with, I’d say two to three takeaways in a three to five minute video and I would just shoot the video, I would upload it natively to LinkedIn. Sometimes I would add captions, sometimes I would not just depending on my time, but for me, what I really focused on, on LinkedIn was conveying thought leadership were on Instagram, I try to kind of let people in to see who I am on Twitter. I try to foster conversations. But on LinkedIn, I look at this as conveying thought leadership and connecting people. And so a lot of times I will spend time like, actually this morning, my LinkedIn time was just scrolling the feed, figuring out where it places that I could tag in other people in my network, that they would find this valuable, right, because I think there’s, you know, there’s, there’s, it’s great about talking about yourself is great about sharing things that you find valuable. I think it’s even more powerful to connect people to things that they might find valuable. And so I do try to strategically do that. A couple of times throughout the week and really pay attention to engaging and then I’d say, the other big part of my strategy on LinkedIn is more so than any other network. I reply to comments on my posts, as immediate as I can, the reason I have notifications on my phone is because if someone comments on my on a on a post, maybe it’s a picture, maybe it’s a video, maybe it’s even, just, you know, comment tags me in a post, my goal is to get back to them in five minutes. And the reason that is is because I look at LinkedIn is it isn’t the platform that people are scrolling morning, noon and night like like an Instagram might be or they’re not, you know, on there every single evening like Facebook, a lot of times it could be on there once or twice a week or maybe even less than that. And if I can, if I can reply to them, while they’re still in that initial initiation when their comments, I’ve really found that just immediate reply sparks a conversation that usually leads to a direct message that can lead to a call rather than doing it kind of like a We do on Instagram where I’ll just reply later on tonight to everyone who comments on Instagram. That’s fine because someone’s getting back in. But on LinkedIn, some of my not check that back in for a week. And then a week from now when they see the notification that Brian replied, they’re like, wait, why did I comment on Brian’s post? Like, what? What about Brian’s post made me inspired. So I really, really work hard on replying in real time on LinkedIn. So if I’m going to post something that is fostering engagements, I also make sure that my phone is readily available to engage back during those critical hours once that post is live.

Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. I actually, I actually recommend people to like if there’s somebody, let’s say, let’s use, you know, your keynote talks. For example, let’s say there’s somebody that you are, you know, pitching, you want to be their keynote, you want them to pay you 5000 10,000 a million dollars to be their keynote. I would, I would wait. I’d have patience and wait until I see a little green dot next to their name on LinkedIn. And that’s when I would message them because you know, they’re there you can have like a little mini chat versus messaging them. And like you said, it’s who knows when it’s going to be back. And now you’re maybe haunting them a little bit as opposed to, you know, they’re sitting there, you know, they’re there, the green.is on, that’s when you message them and say, Hey, just checking in, I’ve, you know, I’ve got a couple questions. You know, whatever your follow up is with them, it gives you the opportunity, they’re sitting there and and when you’re on LinkedIn, I feel like you’re also a little bit in networking mode, right? Because you’re it so so your brain has shifted from I’m not interrupting them in the middle of while they’re balancing their checkbook right there on LinkedIn. So they’re already kind of made that little mental shift from, you know, task oriented to networking oriented, and I think that’s the time to go in and start to foster that relationship. So I love that.

And I also think about it too, from a standpoint of, you know, I use the data that that LinkedIn provides me as my, you know, business development engine. So when I post a video, I will often go in 48 hours later, and not only see who Who liked it or you know what company they came from. But I will actually add that to a spreadsheet, I have a spreadsheet that I have that will I kind of track and it’s not too detailed but I, I try to track who’s paying attention to my content. And that’s one of the my best success stories was I really wanted to speak in Adobe events. And I had worked with Adobe in the past, but I just hadn’t connected with the right people inside of Adobe. And I posted a video on where I was talking about futuristic technology and how I was testing out this new at home automation project. And it was like, it was literally a consumer product. I had no brands in the post. And I noticed there was there was a couple people from Adobe that had watched my video right so I clicked on the who viewed my video which had a couple people from Adobe, and what I do is I clicked on each one of their that profiles just to see okay, if people from Adobe are are currently liking my content, what are the things that are Adobe are sharing, and I found that there was this great article about how artificial intelligence impacting the creator of tomorrow. And it was a couple people in the in my Adobe network had actually liked the post, a couple of them had commented. So I commented on the post and said, Wow, this is a topic I love to talk about. I believe you guys have inspired me to create a podcast episode about this. And so I ended up doing a podcast episode about artificial intelligence genius. Yeah, and kind of connecting the dots. And then what I did was I would, rather than just posting the link interface to LinkedIn, like anyone could have done, or even just promoting it on my account, I did a video connecting the dots and saying, okay, when I was talking about this thing, I know that a lot of people from Adobe inspired this and after reading this Adobe blog post that you guys can read in the comments. This is something that this is my take on this piece, right? And so it wasn’t, hey, Adobe, look at me. It wasn’t, hey, go listen to my podcast, rather, it was connecting the dots. And what I found was a lot of people in the comments said, Brian, I’m going to listen to your podcast now or Brian, I’m gonna check out that episode. So, and then all of a sudden it was about it was about 24 hours later, I got a message from an executive in Adobe that said, Wow, I can’t stop seeing this video of yours in my feed. And after talking to a couple people on my team, I would love to jump on a phone call and see how we can get you involved in the Adobe event coming up next month. And And sure enough, they brought me out, I ended up hosting, co hosting the event with Ann Handley, another marketer. And after I asked them about that, they said, you know, Brian, we knew about you, and a lot of people on our team, you knew that you would work with Adobe. But it wasn’t until you connected the dots to what Adobe cared about, to what you share that it made sense for us to work together. And I think every business owner, I don’t care what business you’re in. If you can help the brands that you want to work with, or maybe the entrepreneurs you want to work with, connect the dots between their mission and your mission. The sale is easy. And to me that was all done using one LinkedIn video that had nothing to do with my clients and then looking at the data doing a little bit of research about them, and then kind of connecting the dots. And I can tell you, it sounds like a lot of work. But that was all done within like an hour and a half total, I posted, I engaged, and I closed a deal that ended up being well worth $20,000. And so when we talk about not finding the time, it’s little things like that being able to, you know, use the data that is at your disposal. And really, you know, show you care. I tell people this all the time, it’s, it’s my number one secret when someone says, Brian, how do you close business on? On Twitter, I say I show I care more about the people than the people that are already on Twitter. How do you do it on LinkedIn, you show you care show you care, just by going a little bit above and beyond. I mean, we do it when we’re offline. We do it on the golf course we do it. When we meet someone at a networking event. It takes a little bit of a mindset shift to do it on LinkedIn. But when you do it, I mean the results can be pretty darn amazing. And I can tell you, I’m even shifting my focus even more in 2022 LinkedIn where I’m doing my after show which used to be on Twitter. Facebook Live, I’m actually moving the after show of my podcast over to LinkedIn live. Because LinkedIn has been that much valuable for me. I’m almost moving completely off of Facebook because not because I don’t believe Facebook’s valuable, it has its resources. But for me and the business focus of these pieces of content, it just means makes more sense to spending that time on LinkedIn.

Karen Yankovich 33:20
Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, I have a little bit of a tear in my eye. I’m not gonna lie. I, I’ve been doing the same thing. Because, you know, initially, I was putting, you know, kind of doing a Facebook Live recap of my podcast, because I agree with you. I think that that’s a better way to get people to listen to your show, and just post a link to the podcast like, hey, this what we’re talking about this week, you’re gonna want to hear this. And don’t forget about this and check out that. And then what I was doing was uploading it natively to LinkedIn. And then I’ve been also been able to do LinkedIn live, which is amazing. But that gets so much more engagement because we’re not putting we’re not just dropping in links to stuff. And people think like, they just drop in links to stuff. That’s not how people operate. You’ve got to think about what you would do if you were on LinkedIn. Are you really going to click on Flink didn’t listen to a half hour podcast. But you might get intrigued enough by it to throw it in your download list and listen to it next time you’re in the car, right if you just give them a little taste of it, so. So I love that. And I probably have 4000 more questions around all that. But what I want to hear is, I mean, I just wanted I just want to acknowledge one other thing I, what you just described, and I think we’re experiencing the same same feedback from people, which is it sounds like it sounds complicated. It isn’t complicated. It is it is. It’s strategic. And it takes a little bit of planning and thought, I also have a Google Doc that a Google Sheet that I use to track everything, because that Google Sheet is always open on my computer like it is there’s never time that it’s not open, because that’s where the money is in my business, right? the conversations that I’m having, and being strategic about who I’m reaching out to who I’m connecting to. I mean, I talked I teach LinkedIn marketing, but I teach people also, are you connected to the journalists in your area? You know, are you? Are you connecting with them? And are you sharing their articles and saying, hey, this guy just wrote this great article about this, y’all need to pay attention to this. I have clients getting crazy media hits, because now what’s happening is the journalists appreciate that they’re building relationships with their local media. And that, you know, eventually they’ll start to feature them in articles, right, but it doesn’t come from just pitching them, or dropping in your podcast links or your blog links. It comes from being of service and supporting them and providing value to them. And it sounds so easy, but it is that easy.

Brian Fanzo 35:32
You know, it’s the same thing that works offline. You know, my, my dad was in candy sales, and he owned a global Candy Company. And one of the things he would always tell me was that he would leave a meeting or leave someone’s office, and he would immediately open up the notebook that he had in his pocket, and he would write down what the pictures were in their office, what sporting teams they might have said they had, they were favorite teams, maybe even the authors of a couple of books on the bookshelf, and I would be like dead Why would you do that? And he’s like, well, I’ve learned that not only taking that a step further when I want to give them a gift, or I want to bring something up that I can call back to that, but it also allows me to take things out of the business context and relate with them at a deeper level. And I think everyone in sales has, has understood, you know, how important that is. and funny enough on LinkedIn, we have all of that at our disposal. Like it is easier to do that. But when we for some reason, it’s like, like my dad, would my dad would get on an airplane, fly to meet with a client. And I would say, Dad, why would you fly there? And he’s like, well, because I can get more based on them picking me up at the airport and driving me to the meeting and sitting in their office than I could on a phone call. And it never made sense to me at the time. And then when I look back now, it’s a matter of mom, my dad spent two days just trying to get the background information on that person so that when he’s making the sale, you can make it relatable and you can touch the right points. We can now spend 20 minutes It’s on LinkedIn, clicking into their Twitter profile, maybe looking to see who your mutual connections are. And I and I really do feel like it’s easier if you’re willing to put in the work in the digital space. If you’re still looking at it as, hey, I’m doing this differently. It does get overwhelming. But for those of us that are kind of figured that out, it’s amazing for me when I when I connect with somebody, I know what what they’ve recently done. I’ve done a little bit of research, which used to take my dad two days, it’s taking me 20 minutes. I think that’s kind of the beauty of what you know, digital expression, something like LinkedIn offers us.

Karen Yankovich 37:33
Yeah. So tell me, how do you have a prospecting approach as well, like you talked a little bit about how you got in front of Adobe, which was great. Do you have, do you know, is there a Is there a pre work to that? Like, do you have? I don’t know. Do you have prospecting? Do you connect with people on LinkedIn in hopes of at some point getting in front of them in their conferences?

Brian Fanzo 37:56
I do. I do. So I I have like, actually, I have one out it’s too a two year out in the three year out. And usually what I focus on from a prospecting is different vertical.

Karen Yankovich 38:05
Hey, can I just stop you right there? Did you guys all hear that a two year out and a three year out? Okay, this is not money, you can get money in your pocket tomorrow from LinkedIn. But this is where the beauty is those spreadsheets once you start them, and it’s six months from now, or a year from now or two years from now, and and all those dates are popping up. That’s like, money falling out of the sky. But anyway, sorry to interrupt

Brian Fanzo 38:26
I can tell you a lot of the content that I’m planning on putting out this early spring is to close clients that are two years out from now. And part of that is, you know, I believe anyone can make an Ask anyone can immediately connect with somebody and say, Hey, put me on your stage. Hey, hire me to consult with this. But I think for me, one of the things that I’ve found has really worked amazing, is I will connect with people and I will put them kind of on. I have a like a private Twitter list. I have a couple of bookmark pages of different people and And things that I want to, let’s just say, you know, strategically look after or nurture. And then what I really work hard on is I celebrate the work that they’re doing today, which includes the speakers that they’re hiring today. And for a lot of people, I will get comments all the time, like, Brian, why would you? Why would you promote that person on Twitter? Why did you share that person speaking in that event on Twitter, and first of all, I was like, well, I thought it was great fit that they were a great speaker that, you know, is someone that has a similar passion to me, but it also shows my commitment to that community and that audience and I really try hard to be part of that community be part of their, their audience, before they even realize that I want to be on their stage, or I want them to hire me. And so, you know, I can tell you there’s a there’s a big, there’s a big event that’s happening in 2022 that I really want to be a part of, and, and not that I know that this this, these two brands are going to be there, but I have a good feeling that they’re going to be there and so I’ve made it my mission throughout this year. To connect with more people at their company, but also to craft and share more of their content. And so their blog is in my RSS feed, I make sure that I’m checking in on, you know, what they have going on with a press release, you know, I have a Google Alert, even set for their company. And really, it’s not to say, hey, look at me, or, hey, I should be on that stage. Rather, hey, I think you guys are doing great things. And I kind of, as I said earlier, and then my ultimate goal is when I create create a caption on LinkedIn, is to simplify what my thoughts are and how it relates to what I’m sharing. And, and I even go as far as probably sharing eight or nine things for, you know, for one of my prospects, before I even tagged them in it before I even share them with it. Because I will say things like, Oh, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been, you know, I’ve been talking about some of the cool things that your company has been doing for the last couple of months. And it’s hard for someone to argue, you know, it’s not that I just shared it yesterday, and I asked I made a Today they’re like, Well, you’ve been sharing this for months. Oh my god, like, we need to talk to you more and it works pretty magic, but it’s, it’s definitely something I’m committed to. It’s something that, you know, I work hard at. There are times where I feel like wow, that brand I never got on the radar. Maybe I need to be a little bit more bullish with my ask. But for the most part I do work hard at celebrating what they’re currently doing. You know, I got I got a message today via Twitter direct message and someone just it was a it was a brand that I’ve engaged with with for a long time and their messages simply said, Brian, we want to do whatever we can to get you on our stage in front of our company this year. Let’s set up a phone call. And I can tell you I’ve shared their content and tag them on Twitter for probably two years. Never wants asking them to be on stage. And it’s kind of beautiful when they make that ask on Twitter because it’s now not me convincing them I should be on their stage. It’s us making it happen. And it makes it so much easier to to kind of close that deal when it’s that that kind of conversation.

Karen Yankovich 41:58
Oh my gosh, I mean, I I want to just close on that note, because it’s so important. But you know, one thing I just want to, I want to just kind of bring to, to the light that that we haven’t really talked about is because because of the fact that these, this is the long game, right? This isn’t how you sell a pencil, it’s how you sell a million pencils, you know, like, you’re not going to reach out to people, these are sales that you’re nurturing that are, you know, solid five figure, maybe even six figure deals, and that and everybody has those opportunities, regardless of what your business is, you can create a five figure deal, you know, or at least a nice solid four figure deal, right? So, so everybody’s chasing, I feel like a lot of people are chasing, like, you know, funnels, I need to sell I need to have a trip wire and I need to do this and spending all this time on all that and I like flip it and say, let’s get you some five and $10,000 deals before and then you could pay somebody to set all that up, you know, but like it’s the it’s the it’s where the money is. Right? It’s where the bigger deals are. And I don’t know why there’s not more people that understand that that understand. That, you know, putting a little bit of time and effort into a, you know, a solid 10 $20,000 deal. Anybody can do this. It’s not just people that, you know, if your yoga teacher create a $5,000, you know, retreat experience, you know, you don’t just have to go after the $10 yoga classes.

Brian Fanzo 43:16
For sure. And I also I can tell you like, for me, the new podcast I’m launching next month, which I haven’t really debuted or anything yet, when I was kind of talking over with my team, and, and we were talking strategy, and they’re like, well, Brian, you know, another podcast, What’s your goal here? And I was like, I have one goal, it’s to add additional value to those that have already hired me. And we were like, What do you mean, I was like, I’m doubling down on focusing on the people that have already spent money with me to spend more money rather than always worrying about getting new people and it’s, it’s something that I think we all can get a little bit overwhelmed by a lot of times, but I when I went back and looked at my 2019 and my 2018 the idea where I would rather spend my time building more to my existing Audience rather than having to always be in business development mode, the more I found, wow, this is there’s so much work that can be done here. And I really do look at things rather I look at rather than working as a contract or a campaign. I look at everything as a partnership. And, you know, I’m very blessed. I have a couple events that have hired me four years in a row, one year as a host next year as a speaker next year as a host. And and now, you know, I have three retainers with three different events that, you know, even for an event that I’m not speaking at this upcoming year, I’m helping them craft the content as well as pick the speakers and part of that became shifting my focus from saying, where’s all my new clients to how can I add additional via value to my existing clients?

Karen Yankovich 44:41
Awesome, awesome. Awesome. So Brian, how can people find out more about you what you know, tell us about your podcast what’s what’s happening in your world?

Brian Fanzo 44:49
Sure. So I’m the founder iSocialFanz, the letter “i” and then “Fanz” with a “Z” at the end. So I’ve isocialfanz.com and I’m iSocialFanz on all of the social media. Via channels, of course, LinkedIn. I’m Bryan Fanzo – f-a-n-z-o, and my podcasts that I currently do each week is called FOMO Fanz, which really stands for the fear of missing out, I try to cure your fear of missing out. And I haven’t released the name of the new podcast yet. But I have a new one coming out in February, which is much more interviewed, focused, focused kind of with a futurist a twist to but I always tell people pick your favorite social network and give me a full year. And I can promise you, you’ll stay up to date on that everywhere in anywhere. And if you have additional comments or things that you are curious about, you know, feel free to message me on any of those channels. And this is a lot of fun. I’m so glad we were able to make it happen.

Karen Yankovich 45:37
Me too. Me too. Thanks so much for being here. Brian. This was great.

Brian Fanzo 45:41
Thank you.

Karen Yankovich 45:42
Oh, my gosh, that was so fun. is Brian not amazing? I love talking to him because he he really has created a great career for himself. And he’s using LinkedIn to help him get there. And I know you hear this from me a lot. So I wanted to just start bringing some other people onto the show, to get their perspective. So you can can understand a little bit about how they’re using this powerful tool so that you can bring more abundance, more richness, more amazing opportunity into your world for 2020 and beyond. So I hope that you loved it as much as I did, definitely check out Brian’s podcasts and all the great things that he’s doing. And don’t forget, this is the week you can get into She’s LinkedUp course, this is a very affordable course check it out at she’s linked up. com, we would love to have you in the course we only open the doors a couple times a year we go through this live, we go through the course live with you. That’s why we don’t have it open all the time. Because I want to be able to provide you support every step of the way through this course. It’s half the price of most courses that are delivered like this. So we’re doing that deliberately so that we can make it really easy for you to achieve your goals this year and beyond. So check that out at she’s linked up calm. We’ll be back here again next week for another fun episode. Thank you so much. You’re listening to the show today.