Local Market Monopoly

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Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I am Clarence Fisher, your host, and dingdong. Just like Mr. Roger's neighborhood. We have returning guest today, Mr. Russ Knight. By the way, Russ has the fifth-highest grossing. So I say highest grossing, the top of the top five podcasts in Local Market Monopoly history, Russ is number five. His very first visit here is how he built a thriving business spreading the, uh, what is it? Spreading goodness actually. Just go to Local Market Monopoly, search for Russ Knight and listen to the first episode that we did together. It is a great one, and today was a great one as well. Russ is so full of knowledge and has a heart to help everyone that he comes in contact with. So we talk about, but don't get it twisted. He's pretty shrewd.. So we're, today we're talking about the shrewdest LinkedIn marketing moves that you can make not only in 2023, but in years to come from someone who actually uses it real world LinkedIn advice.

Clarence Fisher: He's gonna talk about how to appear trustworthy and believable. When I had that bullet point, I thought, Do you wanna appear trustworthy and believable when you're not? No, that's not what we're saying. We're just saying how to make you appear even more trustworthy. And he's gonna show you a trick that if you have kind of a spotty work history because of things that have been going on, you've been unemployed, kind of in between jobs. There's a specific tactic that he teaches that is awesome. I mean, it blew me away. And then the one thing that you need to do, if you're building your brand to be a leader on LinkedIn, this one thing you have to do. And unless you own the company you work for, he's gonna share you something that you must do with your personal LinkedIn profile. It's all coming out. Put to iPhone awaiy. Put it in your pocket and, uh, we'll be right back with Russ Knight.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses used to dominate their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: All right, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. Hey, Russ, are you there, sir?

Russ Knight: I am.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome, awesome. Hey, man, thanks for taking the time out and joining me. Today, as we were talking, I guess it was about, I don't know, a week ago, a couple of weeks ago about LinkedIn and, and you know, how it, how it fits with you. And I thought, Man, it would be so awesome to have on as my guest here, someone who kind of a real life business owner, success around the town who is using LinkedIn and find out kind of how you use it and, and some of the things that you do to make it work for you. So thanks for, thanks for joining me today.

Russ Knight: You bet, Clarence. I'm looking forward to it. This is something that I've yammered about for a long time from, I got on LinkedIn back when the logo was in black and white. Okay. Maybe never really was, but I, that's my joke about being old. And so anyway, Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: I'm like, you can only get on LinkedIn after 10:00 PM Right, .

Russ Knight: Yeah, exactly. I joined, Yeah. And then the planes come on and when they go off the air. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, I got on LinkedIn, like most people, I got on in the midst of a job search and somebody said, Hey, you need to do this. And it is a platform that is useful, but it changes pretty regularly on purpose as they work to modify, make it more relevant and helpful. And so I just thought, man, as we're talking about this, I see some things that have changed recently that might relate to different people depending on how they are approaching LinkedIn.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, yeah. How, how, what, what are you seeing out there?

Russ Knight: So, my thought first is, there are some folks who are gonna be intimidated and say, Oh, I'm not, I'm not really great at this and I don't know where to begin. First thought is, you've gotta kind of come up with a game plan to say, what is your, what are you doing with LinkedIn? What's the point here? Are you just trying to grow connections and to have a higher headcount? Because I'm telling you that that doesn't do much for me, and I'm, I, there's no badge that I get to wear because I have a certain number of connections and it doesn't benefit me. If I'm consistently publishing good content to help my network, that that's helpful to have a wider reach. But my first goal is to keep track of my network, the people I actually know. So when a friend approaches me and says, Hey, do you know someone at Unit Corporation at St. Francis Hospital?

Russ Knight: I can say, Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact, and make a real good connection instead of being, I'm connected to that person, but I don't really know what their deal is. So, you know, we've all had those kinds of conversations and I just, I hate that I would much rather really know somebody. So once I do make a connection, I try to reach out and say, Hey, tell me, what problem do you solve for people? How can we help each other? So I think going to, from the approach, beginning with the point of how can I help people really with very little expectation of them doing something for you? Because if you come at it with, I need you to read all my stuff and subscribe to my newsletter, and by my book and all of that, I think it's smarmy or you, we've all been approached and we all hate the fact that as soon as you connect with somebody, first thing they're doing is knocking on your inbox, on knocking on your door, asking to grab 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever.

Russ Knight: And it's, it may or may not be relevant. And even if it isn't is relevant, that's a weird way to start. So right to begin with a conversation or, Hey man, what are you about? How can I help you? What are you looking for? So some people are looking to broadcast their expertise in hopes that someone might hire them or fund their brilliance. Others are looking to just engage with people who think like they do or think differently. Less and less I'm seeing people that wanna connect with people that think differently, , but, uh, that's our culture. And, uh, some people are looking to connect with folks in a particular industry or in my particular geography or a future geography if they're planning to make a move. So if somebody's planning on moving to another metropolitan area, they might start specifically making contact on LinkedIn with that end in mind.

Russ Knight: So that's kind of the beginning, is to just start with your goal and say, Hey, what am I trying to get out of this? A lot of people are saying, Hey, I'm not looking for a job. This is a waste of time. Well, not really, depending on what you're doing, I think it's always good to connect with people and to, for me, I've built my world network as being a connector. So if somebody is trying to make a connection for a job search, for a lot of reasons. I wanna be able to be that conduit that, that puts people together. Cause I think I can benefit both people when I get to do that. And that gets me excited.

Clarence Fisher: So you're starting,

Russ Knight: That's kinda the first point.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. All right. Great, great. Starting with the end in mind here, like why am I starting, why am I, I really like the fact that you said add value always, but that's kind of, that's kind of your, your. But for sure on LinkedIn, I, I think, you know, adding value is always great, but okay, so we've got that step and then what's next?

Russ Knight: So I would say everybody, you know, everybody's got a different take. Like, Oh, you need to do this and this and update your photo and all these things. First pass, let's take a, let's just view it like a human look at your own profile and say, Would you connect with you? That's how do other people see me? What do you offer that would make someone want to connect with you? Honest truth is most profiles suck. There is so much more that you can do to communicate what you're about. So one of my particular things is coming at this, coming to LinkedIn, primarily thinking about it for job seekers. I've been through more job change than any other three people I know, and it sucks. And I wanna help people who are dealing with that. So one thing that I have done is on my profile, the first job you see on my history is actually my real professional summary.

Russ Knight: It begins from the, the month that I graduated college in June of 93, 1993, to be clear. And so encompasses everything I've done. And the reason that I do that, it looks like it's its own job. The reason I do that is because my work history prior to Christian Brothers has been spotty. It's, I've bounced around, I've had some gaps, I've had some different things. So in order to kind of cover up the fact that I've had stints of two years here, five years here, etcetera. I have one job that says, this is the summary of Russ Knight. And so I think that that helps people understand kind of who I am and what I'm about. And that may be helpful for somebody else. And I got that tip from somebody else who, it was a professional coach for folks that are in job transition. And I just thought it was really good. And it just helps tell your story the way you wanna tell it.

Clarence Fisher: Yes, that's great. That's great.

Russ Knight: Another one is most, I think they say, I don't know, people believe you 64% more when you use a statistic. And so 99% of people don't post content on LinkedIn. I don't know if that number's actually true. I saw it the other day. It's probably about right that because the, the vast majority of people don't post content. And those that do, the majority of them, from my perspective, all they do is post content. They don't interact. And so the important thing about this is, if you're trying to build your brand as a helper, as an expert, as a connector, as an industry leader, you put your good content out there. And then if somebody comments, asks a question, counters your argues with you, you've got to engage. That's the whole point, is to just get involved. And I think one thing that folks miss, if they're intentionally posting content on LinkedIn, the piece that they miss is to go and comment on other people's stuff.

Russ Knight: You see a poll that you like, or that's interesting to you, vote and comment. You see a post from somebody that is a leader of a Fox, somebody that a lot of folks are paying attention to, Daniel Pink or Ariana Huffington comment on their stuff. And you'll be surprised to see the number of views of your profile from other people who say, Hey, that was a thoughtful comment, or interesting. I'd like to, I wonder why they're involved, what their deal is. So I just think most people view it as a broadcast mechanism these days. And it's, I just think that's acting like a sociopath. You wouldn't do that in any other environment. So why do it here? Respond in getting involved. You're putting that content out there to get a response when you get it, engage, follow up, have a conversation with that person.

Russ Knight: So another new thing that I've seen over the past year, 18 months, that's probably been longer, but that's just from my perspective, is the fact that folks are using polls. So a way to say, Hey, what are the biggest drivers for you here in these last four months of your calendar year that are gonna help you move the needle for your business? Is it you need more customers, you need more profitable business? You need whatever the metric is, and give people a few choices and let them vote. And then to begin to engage a conversation with folks about whatever's on your mind. So I'm in the midst of thinking about goal setting and projections for next year. So thinking about a lot of things, I, I'll probably end up with several questions that I want to put out there to just engage people, see what they have to say.

Russ Knight: And again, sometimes you get comments from knuckleheads or people who say, Oh, I totally agree with you, come on, give me something more than that. Please don't comment with nothing. Add some value when you do. So I regularly, so next step, I guess, and I feel like I'm on a monologue here, but so the thing that I see is if I get, if I accepted all the connection requests I get, I would eventually fill up and max out whatever LinkedIn says is the high number that you can have. Cause there is a number, and I don't remember what it is these days, if it's 12,000 or 15,000, but if you took every request from people as an auto repair shop, if I took every request from people from China and Pakistan and everywhere else that are trying to sell the auto parts, my network is full.

Russ Knight: I don't know those people. I'm not gonna do business with them. It doesn't make sense to accept all those connection requests. So for me, I set my own standards, and it's a guideline. It's not a, it's not a contract in blood, but it's just generally a guideline to say first and foremost, can I help this person when I get a request, I get a lot of requests from job seekers since I talk about that a lot. Usually I take that request regardless of where they are. Now, in some cases I get requests from people out of the country that are clearly looking for connections in the US to help them sponsor a visa or something like that. Not interested in that, not a fit. Usually if the person is local to me in salsa, I usually take that connection because we probably have crossed paths or who knows.

Russ Knight: But generally I'll take that connection. Another one that I, I use as a filter is if their profile says they're an independent consultant, to me that means they're usually selling something related to multi-level marketing. And I'm not gonna accept that. I've had people connect with me then approach connections in my network saying they know me and that I referred them. And that's no good. And so I am a little bit more cautious when somebody says independent consultant, and it looks like they're just looking to sell whatever is the latest thing. So unfortunately that bridge has been burned for me. But, and certainly I'm connected to people that do that, but as a rule, as I'm looking at that and filtering, I typically say no, that's my standard. I'm not telling anybody else how to do it. I'm just explaining kind of where my guardrails are and how I approach it.

Russ Knight: Next one is, are they somebody I might hire? Are they associated with my current or former employers or companies in the industry that I'm a part of? I'll probably take that connection. And those are the kinds of people too that I'm looking for to target to say, Hey, I wanna reach out and add them to my network. So to engage conversation. So like I said, that's my particular set of standards. I violate that occasionally just for whatever reason. But I would say set your own standard and decide for yourself what makes sense for you. How do you, it goes back to that first question of what your goal is for LinkedIn and so start there. So I don't know any questions about any of that so far? Did it trigger any thoughts for you, Clarence?

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Are you, how often are you posting content or are you posting content?

Russ Knight: If I was smart and intentional, I would be doing that about weekly. For me, I know some people who post daily and that's their thing. Others might say, Hey, I'm gonna put up post once a month, whether it needs it or not. It really depends on how, again, how you are approaching this and saying, I'm gonna manage this intentionally. And you know, a lot of times what happens is the beginning of the year, just like the gym memberships skyrocket, folks often will say, Hey, I'm gonna get more active on LinkedIn. Well, this is a time, the best time to plant tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today. This is just an investment in your network and people, you know, people you can help. And so it's always worthwhile to say, Okay, I'm gonna be intentional, but I don't post as often as I should. I even have a few videos about automotive repair and maintenance just for the purpose of helping people that I kind of have in my queue that I could post. I just haven't been intentional about that. The shop has been super busy, thank God it has been wonderful. We've got a lot going on. I don't need to do anything to drive and, and draw more vehicles, more cars to the shop. You know, we can always take more, but it's not something that, it's really high on my priority list.

Clarence Fisher: So that things.

Russ Knight: I need to do

Clarence Fisher: So that, that brings up, because I know that a lot of people wanna be in your, in your orbit, so I'm sure you get a ton of requests and you walk us through kind of how you vet those. Are you reaching out to anyone on LinkedIn yourself?

Russ Knight: You bet. Absolutely. I see people that are people from the industry. I occasionally will see somebody who commented on a group post or somebody else's post that I thought was interesting or worthwhile and reasonable to reach out to. So I think that you're just, as you're going through that, occasionally you're gonna run into people that you ought to connect with. And for me, I'm always finding more and more people that are associated with our brand with, you know, we're a franchise brand of Christian Brothers Automotive, and so there's tons of people that are joining shops all over the country oor starting at the home office. And so I connect with those folks there. There's just a myriad of people that I think are, it's helpful to continue to grow and engage. I think I would be smarter. I need to be more intentional about posting regularly with whatever that would be.

Russ Knight: And so another question that some folks struggle with is, what do I post? Man, I would say, what's the big, what's your, the big rock you're trying to, to deal with this week or this month? What are you thinking about? Ask a question, put it out there. Or post a link to an article that you use to help you put something together. Or there's always something going on where you can engage and draw others. You don't have to answer something. You can always, you can ask something to begin a conversation and say, What's a reasonable growth rate based on these factors for me to anticipate going forward? How can we improve our profitability without cutting headcount? This is where we are, this is what we're thinking of, This is what I'm thinking about. So it just depends. There's always, you can always grab articles from sources that you like, things that strike your interest.

Russ Knight: I would encourage you to stay away from politics if that's not your job. If you work for a campaign or work for, in a congressional office or something, that's your business. So I can understand it's okay to post there. However, if I'm posting in support of my candidate or my viewpoint, all I'm gonna do is hack off about half the people who see that. So if your job isn't political, in my opinion, stay away from politics. So I think that the best way to do this, is to just look through LinkedIn, open it up and start making notes about the profiles that you see, that you think are interesting. And then drill into those and say, what is it about these individually that are interesting to me? And then start trying to see if you can see the trends of the 10 or 12 profiles that you chose and say, What is it about these people that made me take note of their profile. And so then emulate those things just so that you're doing the things that would attract your eye. So if you see a lot of people who are publishing good content or just sharing articles from other people, man, and you like that, do that. If you think it's, if you like the folks that send sales messages as soon as they connect and you think that that's a great way to sell, don't do that. Just, just don't.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, I think I need to like LinkedIn. I need to update mine as well. I mean, and use like the services page to, you know, list out some of the services that we do. I've been, I've got test some testimonials up there and stuff like that. But, you know, I think I definitely flesh out that profile. Where I get stuck is accepting connections. I'm a super, super, it's crazy man. I'm, you know, I'm a super private guy.

Russ Knight: Yes.

Clarence Fisher: So the connections things kinda, and I've been burnt, like you, it's like you accept the connection and then like 30 seconds later it's, Hey, quick here to schedule a meeting so that I can, and I'm like, uh, wow. You have no idea how long, how much it took me to click connect on the , you know?

Russ Knight: Right.

Clarence Fisher: So, yeah. Anything else,

Russ Knight: Honestly. Yeah,

Russ Knight: Yeah. Clarence, I would say right at that point, it's okay to take a risk and accept a connection, but it's also okay to go in and break that connection. Oh yeah. I used to try to coach, I, I used to try to say, I'm gonna help people help the world one person at a time and respond to them and say, This is awful. I don't want to talk to you.

Clarence Fisher: Right.

Russ Knight: And the way that you're approaching me is ridiculous. Change your approach. I don't try to coach people on that anymore. If somebody comes at me as soon as we make a connection and they're like, Oh, let's go grab coffee, or let's go without any pretext of reason or mutual connection or anything. And it's immediately they go into sales pitch mode, I'm not gonna respond. I'm just gonna go back in and break the connection.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. I do that too.

Russ Knight: It's easy to do that too. You just go to your connections and remove connection. You can also mute people who you wanna stay connected to that post. Maybe for me, I see people posting too much political stuff, but I, I still wanna stay connected to them. I'll mute them so I don't see their stuff coming up in my profile. So the other thing we talked about when we met is the making sure that your photo is up to date. If you had hair when, when you took that photo, and you don't now man, update it. If it's, if you were, whatever the reason is, it's always worthwhile to go ahead and update your, your profile. It doesn't have to be a professional picture. Next time I don't suit and tie very often, but occasionally when I do, I'll try to snap a picture more appropriate for LinkedIn than the typical golf shirt that I wear.

Russ Knight: But the other one is you can customize your public profile URL. So this is your a link essentially that you can use on a resume, on a business card at the, on your email signature. It's in the contact info section of your profile. So if you go to or search for public profile URL, if your URL there has a bunch of random numbers and letters at the end of it, like after your name, you haven't updated your profile. So mine is linkedin.com/n/KnightRuss, K N I G H T R U S S. And I did that probably as soon as that came out pretty quickly. But Russ Knight was already taken by that time for whatever reason. So you might struggle finding one that matches your name. So if you are somebody who's got your feet cemented to the town that you're in, like if I was, I said I could do Russ.Knight.Tulsa Or something like that, or whatever it is. If you own your own company or you have your kind of own brand, you could use that.

Russ Knight: There's a lot of ways to do that, to make it where it doesn't look like gibberish. And the same is true when you're setting up a Gmail account on a job search. You've used your business email for all things and suddenly you've gotta go set up a Gmail cuz you never got around to it. Don't d four numbers or two. So if you, if you put two numbers in there or four numbers, same is true with your URL with LinkedIn, somebody's gonna assume that's a date of graduation of birth and they might use that to extrapolate your age. Now at a certain point, I'm 51, at a certain point it could become a problem if I was a job seeker that somebody would start to make some judgements about me based on that information. And they didn't ask for it. I volunteered it by putting that number in there. So it's always good if you're gonna use a number in that instance, go with three because they're not gonna, their mind isn't gonna go to that being a date.

Clarence Fisher: Very good.

Russ Knight: That's it.

Clarence Fisher: Hmm.

Russ Knight: A few years ago it was kind of more common for people to publish articles and like have their content posted on LinkedIn. I think they've kind of moved away from that cuz not a lot of folks did it. But I wrote an article one time. We were partnered with the Bama companies here in Tulsa, wonderful employer. And all I did is I wrote an article about what they were doing for their people. And I was bragging on their culture. So I mean, I wrote that five or six years ago. I still think that that idea is relevant. Anytime you can brag on somebody else instead of yourself or shine light on somebody who's doing something amazing, those are the best types of posts. If you're shining a light on yourself, less so, it becomes a little, it is self promotional. People already have a kind of a bad taste in their mouth with LinkedIn about all the self-promotion. So it's something to guard against as you think about what you're gonna post.

Clarence Fisher: So are you finding that LinkedIn is becoming less businessy? Or do you, or you think it's still purely about business?

Russ Knight: No, I think it's complete. I think it is about business and I think that that has, that standard has remained strong. I think it, the more people post memes and the occasional Maya Angelou quote or whatever, it gets a little less so, But what I try to do when I see my friends or coworkers that are posting those kinds of things, I say, Okay, what is it about your work this week that made you think to post this particular quote? Or how do you apply this? How are you applying this thought to what you're doing today? And maybe that's just my personal vent. I really appreciate people being vulnerable saying, Hey, here's where I've failed, here's where I missed. Or saying, here's where I'm trying to apply this really good thought and how it's guiding or helping encourage me towards what I'm doing

Clarence Fisher: Today. That's great. You can always find something to add to something that you share that's kind of, you know, in your words for sure.

Russ Knight: Absolutely. And I just think if all you're doing is just posting, consistently posting other people's stuff, it's harder for folks to try to get a sense of you and what you're really about. So that's why I say make it personal and don't be afraid to make mistakes. I mean, I get that it's the internet and once you post it, it's there forever. But man, you, you can go in and adjust and modify or recognize, gosh, I posted this and this really is not relevant or it's not. I've changed my thinking about this. And I think that's so much better than than saying, I wrote this 10 years ago and, and it's still as double true as it was then. So I like to, I like to show that, hey, I posted this, I was thinking about this, this was relevant at the time and this is how I kind of shifted my thinking.

Clarence Fisher: You know, that's really interesting. I tend to do that. I do that on Facebook as well. Like when you get the, the memories where it's like seven years ago or 10 years ago and I will delete stuff all the time. And it's funny to me the the usually guys who are like, I never delete anything I post because I believe so. And to me. There's nothing wrong with deleting stuff. I mean it's like, that's wisdom , you know, it's like

Russ Knight: Exactly. Yeah. And I post goofy stuff on Facebook. So I kind of back to the original point about starting with your goal for LinkedIn. My goal and intention there is to be professional and helpful, but I'm not gonna post the same kinds of silliness that I post on Facebook. Funny story, I was even, I got slapped down about a year or so after I had gotten involved with Christian Brothers cause I had posted something that really was not brand compliant. And so they, I got a call that they said that post you just made, I know it's on your personal page, but you post a lot of things related to the brand and so it's, you are the brand, maybe this isn't quite appropriate. And so I agreed and took it down. There's a lot of discussions online about who owns your profile and who has the right to tell you to change the tone or what you post about.

Russ Knight: I would say it's your profile and when you put your email address in there so that you can recover your profile, always use a personal email address unless you own the company. Always use a personal email address because you don't know when you're gonna get tapped on the shoulder and suddenly you're locked out of that email locked out of your ability to broadcast your brand and maintain that. So I have both of mine on my profile, but my primary one associated with LinkedIn is my personal Gmail account just for my own protection and based on my history of job change, it's just a good rule of thumb. I've tried to build my profile as an example to show other people what you can do. It's one example. There's plenty of good ones out there, but that's why I say look around, see what you like, look at other profiles and emulate the ones that you like. There's no copyright to have somebody has their profile built.

Clarence Fisher: Man. That's cool. That's another good point. So man, I appreciate you taking the time to come talk to me. Are there any more tips that you like, like if you, what would you say to someone like after they, after they listen to this, you've given the steps that we need to go and kind of make sure that these things are taken care of. But I, you know, I read into so many business owners who are like, you know, I put that picture up there and I started LinkedIn kind of profile because I thought I needed to, but I haven't done anything really, really with it.

Russ Knight: Just got three connections or whatever.

Clarence Fisher: Right, Right.

Clarence Fisher: I would say the first thing to do is put a framework of your profile out there. Tell people who you are, wh