Click through to the good bits.

00:00 Introductions.

23:33 How are you qualified to talk to about personal branding and LinkedIn visibility?

46:26 Who do you work with and how do you add value to their lives?

1:02:24 Is there a formula for producing content that engages people?

1:12:52 What is your recommendation for people to get better at personal branding and LinkedIn visibility?

1:17:01 What should people read?

1:20:34 Who can you throw under the bus who might enjoy to have a conversation like this?

Martin Henley
Hello there, my name is Martin Henley. This is the effective marketing content extravaganza. And if you’re new here, you won’t yet know that I’m on a mission to give you everything you need to be successful in your business. Providing, of course, that is that what you need to be successful in your business is to be much more knowledgeable about and much more effective in implementing sales and marketing. And of course, that’s what you need. If you’re going to be successful in your business, you need more customers, you need more sales, you need more profit, you need a nicer car, a nicer house, nicer holidays, a better retirement. This is how you do it is with sales and marketing. So if that sounds like it might be interesting or useful to you should do all the good things you should like you should share, you should comment, you should get involved. So what goes on here is we bring you the Marketing News, we review the very best and the very worst of marketing content on the internet. And whenever I can, I bring in somebody with knowledge relevant to the success of your business, to extract that knowledge and share it with you, which is what is going on today. Today is Talk Marketing, and I have a guest for you.

Martin Henley
Today’s guests, let’s go to the beginning. Today’s guest is a mathematics and computer science graduate, who went on to become a software tester for almost 12 years before finding his calling as a technical copywriter. He has been running his business experience since 2009, which has offered technical copywriting and LinkedIn consultancy, and management of the Espresso community of 200 ethical businesses solopreneurs looking to build effective online presences. He is the author of the book Content DNA. He was introduced to us by Sam Rathling, who tells us that he is quite the geek when it comes to all things LinkedIn. Today’s guest is the relentlessly helpful LinkedIn nerd, the Espresso Community Leader and not a douche canoe. Today’s guest is John Espirian. Good afternoon.

John Espirian
Absolute pleasure to be here. And thanks for that lovely intro. Cheers.

Martin Henley
You are very welcome. This is becoming my favourite part of this is writing these little intros and delivering them, I’m delivering them better. Now sometimes I have a gap in recording them. And it all goes a little bit pear shaped but then it gets better. But it’s not without its risks, you know, because some people purport to be things that they’re not quite. And then you expect to have a conversation with them about those things. And they don’t know anything about those things. So Sam bless her, wants the world to think that she’s a West Ham fan, but she’s clearly not.

John Espirian
Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah, you’ve got to, you’ve got to fulfil the promises that you put out into the world. If you say that you do something or support something, you’ve got to be able to back it up, haven’t you, but I like those kinds of conversation starters. And I recommend everyone comes up with something that has nothing to do with business so that you’ve just got kind of a door to open so that you can start a non salesy conversation. So putting stuff like that, as long as you can back it up, I think it’s a really useful thing to do, especially on LinkedIn, where it’s all dry and boring, and business otherwise

Martin Henley
100%. You see, this is my I’ve got an idea to bring about peace in the Middle East. Because you know, when you are watching a game show, and you’re not really interested, you don’t care about these people. And then they give you a couple of stupid, silly facts, like they’re from Halifax and they work in a bank and they’ve got three kids, and then all of a sudden, you’re kind of interested in them Do you know, I mean, you’ve got that little bit of rapport. So my idea I don’t know if it’s the whole solution, but I think there should be international game shows in the Middle East, where people get to understand that people on the opposing side are also have jobs and careers and children and interests and hobbies and all those things. So technically, in a marketing sense, what we’re doing is we’re building rapport with our audience, aren’t we we are giving them a hook so that they understand that the people they’re hearing from are human. So we’ll we’ll get the the most uncomfortable thing we’re going to talk about right now out of the way, which is that you actually are a Liverpool fan.

Unknown Speaker
I actually am and my team won 7-1 last night so I’m quiet.

Martin Henley
So it’s a little bit of a roller coaster isn’t it for Liverpool this year? It’s been mainly down so far this season. Is it going up slowly and then yesterday was a huge great big down. Doesn’t say it was up. It was a debt. I don’t know. I’m a Manchester United fan. So Liverpool are actually the enemy as far as I’m concerned.

John Espirian
Thank you for having me.

Martin Henley
It’s okay we can talk because we know that we’re human we can have a conversation now you know like the game shows.

John Espirian
We can bond over a shared hatred of Man City of battered you recently and will be battering us on Sunday. No doubt.

Martin Henley
No doubt that’s frightening that man is that man that they’ve got scoring three hattricks in eight Premier League games beating the record by 40 Games. It’s not really f air that he’s,

John Espirian
There’s been there’s been more than 2 million signatures to get him to bought deported. In the league. Like what on earth are you talking about?

Martin Henley
Yes, I mean, they are by and far, by far and away the best team of the Premier League, like the standout team of the Premier League for the last eight years. And it will be more obvious if Liverpool hadn’t been doing such an amazing job of keeping up with them, you know, and actually nicking a couple of trophies. And now they’ve added this. Is it rude to call somebody a freak? You know, it’s like, it’s freakish that he scores that many goals. With that few touches. Did you see him saying his goal was to have five touches and score five goals. And

John Espirian
it’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s actually good. I think he’s so good that you can’t even dislike him. You just got to sit back and go that this is we’re watching something amazing here. Let’s just enjoy the fact that we’ve got such a good player in the league. So I don’t have any hatred towards Ireland. He’s just

Martin Henley
he’s a top top player. I suspect he doesn’t like Manchester United a little bit more than most people don’t like Manchester United because of what the greatest player who ever played in the Premier League due to his poor dad. Yeah, good. Okay. No way. Yeah. You know, Keno, yes.

Martin Henley
Yeah, I’m happy to report that you are an actual football fan. You know what’s going on? Yeah. Yeah, haul road, Sam needs to get yourself on a course if she’s going to try and pass yourself off as a West Ham fan. And the thing is, I think it’s fine. I think you don’t have to, it’s a little bit like your pineapple thing. You know, it’s like, you just want to put something in there. That gives people leverage, you know, give someone like that little book, too. Yeah,

John Espirian
it’s exactly that I call them conversation hooks. Because, you know, the one of the big problems I see when I look on LinkedIn profiles is that people treat it like an online CV, and it’s all very professional. And it’s all very nicely formatted and stuff, but you don’t actually get to know who the person is behind the photo. And yeah, in a world with lots of options, you know, you’re just going to forget that accountant or whatever, because all you had was a list of skills, you don’t really know the person. So it might seem it might seem a little bit superficial to do stuff that is away from your business, but, but conversations are where all the business happens on LinkedIn. So just putting in something that’s a bit of a pattern interrupt that people go What’s that that’s interesting, or that’s memorable. It’s really valuable,

Martin Henley
I think, really valuable one, there was a guy that I used to work with, I used to work selling on the telephones, and I worked for a company called the parliamentary review. And there was this Muslim Glaswegian guy there called Moeen, Yaseen. And his opener if he got a decision maker on the phone, was I am Alenia seen and the sky is green. And he would say this like 40 times a day. And you can’t imagine these people on the other end of the phone like the shock, they’ve got this Glaswegian bellowing down the phone at them, and he won all the competition competitions every week, this is the only reason that it’s relevant that he’s, and this was in the 90 So the core of the prize was all champagne. So this guy must have had like a garage full of champagne. So you definitely never drank it, you know, it’s so this breaking? What did you What did you call it breaking?

John Espirian
You could call it a pattern interrupt, you know, it’s just a pattern interrupt not expecting to see that just pique someone’s curiosity. And, and if that gives you a marginal edge, that’s all you need, you know, just open the door to a conversation.

Martin Henley
Yes. Well, the thing is, I think you’ve got to pull people out of everything that’s going on for them already. You know, because if you don’t do that, you don’t have a chance. They’re not hearing you. They’re not listening, you know. So you’ve actually got a it’s, you’ve got to shock people, I think out of what’s going on in the pineapple thing isn’t going to shock anyone necessarily, but it might just give them a like, ah, there’s a thing you know. So before we start proper, it seems to me I don’t know if this is a phrase, but I’ve just made it up. So I’m going to share it with you now. It seems to me like people are chewing both ends of the bone on LinkedIn. Because as you put it, there’s a very sterile, very professional kind of profile. And then there’s this awful I think trend where people are sharing really, really personal things, you know, like sentimental emotion Shanell things. And that just seems weird. To me, it seems like the line is somewhere in the middle. And people aren’t in the middle there on both ends, they’re doing the sterile thing on their profile and the very intimate personal thing on in their content in there posts.

John Espirian
Absolutely, yeah, there’s, there’s a spectrum. And on the far left, you’ve got professional. And on the far right, you’ve got private. And yes, neither position in extremists is optimal. I think if you’re 100%, professional, and you don’t put any of your personality or any of yourself into your content, then people won’t be able to form an emotional attachment to you, and they won’t be able to remember you. And at the other end of the spectrum, if you just bleed on the page all the time, then that probably takes away from whatever it is that you actually want to be known for. And ya might think that you’re I don’t know, they might think that you’re an unstable person who probably couldn’t be trusted with their hard earned dollars. So the reality is, we’ve all got to pick where we fall on that spectrum. But 0%, and 100% are not good places to live. Really, we should just put our personality into everything we do. And choose our level of comfort of what we put out into the world and remembering that the internet remembers everything. Yes. But don’t don’t go to the extreme ends, because neither of them is optimal.

Martin Henley
No. And what I’ve come to realise is the I’m a relationship seller, and I always have been, and I only realised that recently because somebody wrote a book about value. And I got to interview them. And I realised, okay, that’s what I’ve always done. So I always want to be mates with you, if you’re my customer, I kind of want to be the mate that you go to when you’ve got a problem with the thing that I’m a specialist in, you know, that’s kind of where I want to position myself. So 100% When I’m having conversations with my customers, it will be about their families, their holidays, their football teams, they’re all of these things. But that’s a place that you go to with somebody do you know, I mean, it’s not the way you start? You know? And it’s certainly I wouldn’t, I mean, maybe with some of my customers, I’m good enough friends that will be interested if they have a bereavement in the family do you know I mean, and, and we want to be supportive and all those things. But yeah, it just, it makes it an unpleasant place to be for me, because I tell you why I think it is, is because people don’t know how to talk about the value that they deliver, they don’t really understand the value they deliver, and they don’t know how to talk about it. That’s my feeling, if they were able to contribute something value, and valuable and relevant about what they do, then they wouldn’t have to lean on this crutch of Yeah,

John Espirian
we talk a lot in marketing about know, like, and trust. And I think a lot of people just forget that like is in the middle of that, you know, you can’t just turn up and then immediately be trusted. It really works like that. So I think if you want to do anything that’s remotely around organic marketing, bringing people to select themselves into your sphere, you’ve got to be in some way likeable or relatable. And that means just not being 100% about business. And if you have a long term approach to business, which is what I do, then it’s okay to develop relationships that lasts months or even years before you ever make an ask. Because somewhere down the line, that person might want to do business with you or might want to refer you so so there’s no problem there shouldn’t need to be a rush. Whereas the other business model very much that kind of push, push, push, make 100 phone calls a day, put your ads everywhere, is all about trying to get results yesterday, and that just leave old and I really I don’t get involved in any of that kind of stuff at all.

Martin Henley
Excellent. Good, because I don’t think there’s, like you say, especially long term value, I think there are like smash and grab merchants. I know what I think I think that people are, they don’t believe that they deliver value. They don’t even wonder why their customers continue to buy from them. And they are just out there hoping that someone will buy from them. Do you know I mean, and I think the core to being in business is to understand exactly who you can help and how you help them. And then the marketing piece is just about how you communicate that to people that you’re communicating with for the first time, I think I just want to say very quickly, I I’ve just a bag full of issues is what you will learn about me and spirit, John, so. So that’s just what I am. But I was complaining about this to Sam and Sam gave me an excellent tip to make my feed more interesting, which is to go and hit the notification spell on the people that I’m interested in. So I’m marketing this podcast as like the International League of marvellous marketeers. So now what will happen is your your posts will appear on my feed and I’ll start liking them. And you know, I’ve got away entirely from from that kind of content, which is good news. There’s one more thing I want to talk about before we get into the structured bit, which is you are a man informatics and computer science graduate. And

John Espirian
maths. I was good at maths at school. So I just decided to study at a university. But that was in, in hindsight, although it gave me a good grounding, it’s like it’s it’s nothing close to what I’m really doing now. So I don’t know.

Martin Henley
Well, I don’t know if it will, I mean, you’ll know how far away it is from what you’re doing. But I think to be a marketer, especially now in 2020, to where we are working advanced digital marketing, you know, we’ve been doing this now for 1015 years. And I think more than ever, like an effective marketer has to be partnered, Park creative. And it strikes me in the short conversations that we’ve had, and from spending some time looking at your stuff, that you might be the walking embodiment of that.

John Espirian
Well, that’s very kind of easy to say, thank you. I think if you don’t, if you don’t have any concept that you need to measure the things that you’re doing, then your success is probably down to complete luck. You just don’t know what’s working. So I think there needs to be some measurement going on, so that you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. The challenge with things like personal branding is, a lot of it is kind of emotional. And it’s very hard to put numbers around those things. Like if I turn up and produce some helpful content for someone, they might just think to themselves, that’s a helpful guy, I’ll, you know, I’m going to look more favourably on his stuff in the future. And I’m going to go and tell my cousin to go and hire him in three months time. You, it’s hard to measure those kinds of things. But the net effect is clear. Because if you build a good personal brand, people will come and self select and your business will grow. So what I’m saying really is there are some things that you can measure obvious metrics that you can measure how many comments you’re getting on your posts, for example, as a clear sign that maybe you’re doing something right, or maybe doing something very wrong, but there are intangibles. And so the more you can at least control the controllables the better chance you’ve got I look at everything in terms of probability and the better chance you’ve got of being having some longevity in the market.

Martin Henley
Yeah, I think 100% And I think the thing is, it was John Wanamaker wasn’t it said, half of my advertising effective, I don’t know which half. That was, yeah, that was 160 years ago. And what I say because I teach for money is what I do. And what I say to my groups is like, if you someone came to me, for my team has said that to me, now, we would take them out into the carpark and dispense with them, because the whole benefit of digital marketing is that you get this feedback, and you just have to be bright enough to take it on and, and report it and be able to use it to be more effective. So yeah, so that’s cool. I’m excited about this, man, I’m really excited.

John Espirian
Good stuff I’m going to give you before you dig into your thing, actually, I’m going to give you an alternative approach. And I can’t remember whether Sam mentioned this in your interview with her. But that the whole clicking the bells thing is something I’ve also tried, I’ve since moved away from that because my notifications got too busy. And so what I recommend now as a better approach, is to go to this screen where you can see all of the people that you’re following, and apply some quite strict rules to who you continue to follow and remove everyone else. So okay, so I have the three, what I call the three E’s, which is education, entertainment, and enterprise. If someone falls into one of those buckets, you continue to follow them. If they don’t, you remove them from your following list. So if they’re teaching you something, you continue to follow them, if they’re making you laugh, or improving your experience in some way you continue to follow them. And if they’re a client or prospective client, you continue to follow them because unfollowing those people would be really dumb. And everyone else, you can just click the unfollow button, they won’t get a notification. And what that does is it really pairs down the menu of stuff that you can see in your feed. And that makes your feed stronger. Because you know, every time you turn up, you’re gonna see something you actually want to see. And you’re going to engage more with those people because LinkedIn has fewer decisions to make about what to show you. You know, if you are following 1000 people and you pare it down to 100. Well, LinkedIn is going to have a lot easier time going, this stuff and this stuff and this stuff, but not all of this. And I think that’s a more productive way of pruning your feed to make it more relevant, rather than saying, I just want to see these people’s stuff because I think that’s a bit too limiting. Okay, well, that’s my approach.

Martin Henley
Excellent, super cool. Well, I will now implement that as well. It’s got so much better is the truth. And now I can actually, if I can pretend that people are following other people that LinkedIn even has to make a decision about, then that would make it even better again. And let’s just say the last thing before we get into the structure is you definitely walk the walk, because you sent me a message today, congratulating me on achieving 10,000 followers. And I don’t even know that. So I’m kind of interested to know how you know that.

John Espirian
I happened to be looking at your profile. And I knew that you were getting close to that before when we first connected. And it’s, it’s one of those things about personalization that I teach people, don’t just wait for someone’s birthday to come along, so that you can send someone a trite kind of happy birthday, this is our opportunity to do some networking, but you can look for any other opportunities to send a non salesy message to someone. So going through a follower threshold. A lot of people don’t even know that they’ve done it. And so it’s a nice surprise, if you are the one to tell them. And especially if you’ve got a little image to go with it, which is what I do. It’s just a nice thing. So I don’t it’s not a programmatic thing at all. It’s just I happened to notice it. And I knew that we were speaking so I thought I’d message you. But if you could do the things that that are personal, and that maybe don’t scale. I think that that lands better with your audience. Like I couldn’t possibly do that with 1000s of people just take me too much time. But yes, it’s well received when it happens.

Martin Henley
Really well received. I thought, this guy walks the talk. Is that what they do when they do things? Yeah, they walk the talk,

John Espirian
the talk the walk and walk the talk all

Martin Henley
those things? Sorry, the last thing what’s this douche canoe thing? What What on earth are you talking about?

John Espirian
See, that’s another conversation hook. Because that sometimes makes people laugh and other people go what what on earth is that? Well, it relates to a chapter in content DNA where I talk about, I talk about the ideal customer profile, which is what I call the pen portrait, but I also talked about the opposite of that, which is the poison portrait that you know the person you absolutely don’t want to deal with in your business, all the red flags go up. And I characterise that imagined person as the salesy douche canoe, you know that too much of a tan, oversized gold watch slicked back hair, late to meetings, always wants his own way. It’s like look for red flags. And he’s that salesy, douche canoe, and I talk about it in a chapter of the book. And so I put it in my headline, and it often gets people asking, and it’s, again, it’s just a nice non salesy way to, to put some personality into my presence on LinkedIn.

Martin Henley
Genius. I like you so much already, John. Okay, cool. But let’s bring some order to this, shall we? Because we’ve already gone for 22 minutes and 33 seconds, clearing all of these conversation hooks. I like it, I really like it. But you’re already adding value. So that’s really cool. So you know that there are only five questions. The first question is how you’ve qualified to talk to us about your specialist subject, which is personal branding, and LinkedIn visibility. The second question is, Who do you work with? How do you add value to their lives? The third question is, what is your recommendation for anyone who wants to get better at personal branding? And LinkedIn visibility? The fourth question, really easy, what should people read? And then the fifth question, who can you throw under the bus who might enjoy or maybe even enjoy to have a conversation like this with me?

Martin Henley
So question number one, how are you, John Espirian, qualified to talk to us about personal branding and LinkedIn visibility?

John Espirian
After the software and hardware testing, bit of my life was over, I spent more than a decade being a content writer, I got made redundant from my testing job. And I realised that I was actually quite good at explaining how stuff works. So I ended up writing content ghostwriting content for corporations explaining how their products and services worked, widgets, remote controls, you name it. And then I was trying to find some more leads. And I was looking on social media and nothing was working. And eventually I got into LinkedIn. And me being a software tester. I was like, Okay, what does this menu do? What does that button do? Why doesn’t this work the way it’s meant obviously meant to work. Because LinkedIn is quite an unusual social network in that it has its own glitches and foibles. And I just took that kind of that computer science testing explanation background and I started showing people I’ve just learned this about LinkedIn.

John Espirian
I can’t believe it works like this but check this out. And I just kept doing that because I thought this is really helpful because I didn’t know it I was learning it there weren’t any suppose it experts around showing me the way I was just finding it out by myself. I thought that maybe there’s something in this you know, I can I can show people how to write well, and how to use the those foibles of the platform. To get a bit of an edge for visibility, that was about five and a half years ago, and it’s now my full time gig people, people assume that I don’t do writing services anymore. Actually, about a month ago, I stopped doing that altogether. And I just helped people with LinkedIn visibility. And the whole personal branding thing really came around because I was kind of I was inhabiting the brands of the companies I was working with. And it led me to kind of think, well, how did they build this? You know, what, what makes them this brand? And what does it even mean to be a brand? And I had my own kind of epiphany while I was on stage at a conference, and I was asked a question that wasn’t planned.

John Espirian
My marketing mentor was asking me and he said, you know, how are you going to remain relevant in a market full of options and ice without thinking, I said, I’m going to create relentlessly helpful content. And a few people who were in the audience kind of like, that’s interesting. And that phrase stuck with me. And people started echoing it back to me. And it was like call and response in a song, you know, it’s like, you know, you’re onto something when people start saying it. And I thought I realised that that’s it. That’s me. And I had a really lucky moment there. I mean, that wasn’t planned at all. And yet, I’ve got the core of a brand, just percolating through my brain now. Maybe I could think of how others could construct this without having to run on dumb luck. I wrote a book took me two years. And now I help people on LinkedIn. So that’s personal branding. And, and LinkedIn is very much what I want to be known for. And that’s what I specialise in.

Martin Henley
Okay, super cool. And now you’ve got this community. So that maybe that’s question number two, who do you work with how to add value? You’ve got this community. My brand hero, I’ve got to Mary Poppins and Toto. Okay. So Mary Poppins because she is like you relentlessly helpful. She’s got a million nasty ways of getting things done. Toto because he goes into the Emerald City and pulls down the curtain and we all see it’s just the old geezer turning the wheels. Do you know? I mean, that’s kind of the way I see my role is like, there’s so much known about spoken about marketing, so much of it untrue. And I’m trying to just show people like, that’s the show, here’s what you need to do. But how should people be positioning themselves? Like, what personal brand should people be aspiring to? Or how do you go about? I don’t want to say manufacturing, because that sounds too contrived. I don’t want to thriving,

John Espirian
it’s not about any of those things. It’s really about finding a way to read the label of the job that you’re in which you might need some external help to do. But it’s revealing what are the best elements of you. And then reinforcing that, that shape that you’re putting out into the world as often as possible, because realistically, people need to hear a message multiple times before they’re ready to take action. And so when I talk about, you know, my my core of my brand, being relentlessly helpful, I will repeat that until the cows come home, because I want that to that tiny little message to imprint itself on people’s minds. And so that it’s, it’s a referral thing, it’s a repeatable thing. It’s a thing that I’m known for. And I’m being known for one thing on one platform, and that I always think that having a brand that is really crystal clear and simple, like that, is much better than trying to be known for 17 different things. And no one can really sum up what you’re about, and therefore you’ve got no referral potential. So a personal brand for me, is really the set of thoughts and feelings and emotions that come to mind when you interact with someone or, or you know, or think about them. So you just want to be remembered for the smallest, clearest niche that you can. So for me, it’s being relentlessly helpful on LinkedIn. And, and I’ve got a visual brand to go with it as well. So that that hopefully it’s memorable too. And so if someone thinks I need some help with LinkedIn, who can help me with LinkedIn, oh, it’s that guy. If I if I if I can be top of mind for that thought that I will have a sustainable business. So you don’t need to manufacture anything, but you need to think about boiling down your skill set and what is true for you, so that you can be known for that one thing so that you can be referred and get work. And as I said, So Sometimes it’s really hard to know yourself well enough to understand what your unique value proposition is. And so you might need, you know, your best friend or your best client, to just just to talk with them to see what common threads come out so that you can reveal to the world maybe even to yourself, what it is that you want to be known for. Yeah, so it’s not an easy thing to do. And I’ve, you know, I’ve written a whole book on the topic, so it can take time. But the value of it is huge, because I think, personally, I think I’m nicely differentiated from a lot of people who are supposedly LinkedIn experts. I don’t call myself a LinkedIn expert, I call myself a LinkedIn nerd. But I’ve got enough of a brand identity that maybe if you took away the colours, and you took away the logo, and you took away the blue shirt and all that, and you just saw my content, you, hopefully you would go I know who wrote that. You know, he’s referring to douche canoes. And he’s referring to pineapples, and he’s, you know, he’s talking about craptacular things. That’s the lexicon, that’s the, that’s the shape of that person showing up. And if you do it for long enough, that’s the other key thing that I must re emphasise, there won’t be any overnight successes. But if you turn up for months, possibly years, and you’re good enough, then then you won’t be ignored, even on a platform with 850 million people.

Martin Henley
Yeah, 100% 100% I think it’s about reading the label on the journey you’re in might be the most profound thing I’ve heard this year. That is such a good

John Espirian
I can’t take credit for that one. I got that from one of the people I interviewed for the book. Okay. And, but you know, what he said there that that imprinted? Well on me and I use that analogy a lot. Because, yeah, I think a lot of people just have have that, especially Brits. They have that kind of hesitance thinking, personal brand sounds constructed, it sounds manufactured, it sounds like a kind of thing that Kardashian would do. But actually, it’s really the modern term for reputation. And you need to think about what you can do to represent the truth so that people have the right thoughts and feelings when they think about you. And it has to be an honest representation. Because otherwise, all you are doing is you’re building a house of cards, like I could pretend to be relentlessly helpful. And then we meet in person and I could be a real, you know, I’m not going to swear, but I could be someone who really lets you down. Yeah, in which case, it’s all a sham, it’s meaningless. And these days, I think we’re better at smelling out fakes than ever. And so eventually, you’re going to come a cropper if if you’re selling a dream and then not being able to deliver so you’ve got to you’ve got to represent you on your best day and then try and hold up to that as much as possible. So make make the biggest public promises that are true that you can fulfil is I suppose the the watchword? Yeah.

Martin Henley
100%. And it’s like, when I started my business in 2005, I went to Yes, logo.com and I bought this little tree icon for $5. And I put it on my business card, because it looks like the leafs looked like they might be money, like it didn’t didn’t have a currency on it or anything like that. It just looked like the shape of money, you know. And then I joined the BNI. And then I started standing up every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, because I just went insane for it anywhere that would take me I was there. And then I had this minute which was essentially my name’s Martin Henley. I’m in the I’m in the money shaking business. I’ve got a business I’ve got a money tree is the thing you’ve got money tree, you come here to shake your money tree all this stuff. Now, I was completely sick and tired, tired, probably because I ever did it after about six months of doing this BNI. But that resonated for years, there will people that will be people that I could meet tomorrow that would know me as the monetary guy, you know. So it comes back again to these hooks doesn’t it? Like the conversation hooks it’s just like the hook. Like, give people something to recognise you for and then like you say, just deliver it and evolve it and all of those things are 100% works 100% is necessary. I’ve did a whole presentation once about brand, and it’s not something that small businesses really invest in, let alone let alone solopreneurs you know, so does this come as a surprise when you are recommending to people that they should be investing in their personal brand?

John Espirian
Yeah, it might feel like something that’s big, too big and lofty for them. It’s the kind of thing that Coca Cola Do you know that they’ve got a brand and McDonald’s it’s not something that you know, Bob who does accountancy down the street would ever do, but actually, we’ve all got reputations. And it’s a case of, you know, you can’t I sometimes make an analogy with rivers, you can’t, you’re not gonna be able to change the course of a river. But you might be able to do some things that steer the flow a little bit in your favour. So you’ve just got to be mindful of the thoughts and feelings that you want people to have. And above all, be able to actually follow through with those things. Because if you can’t follow through, then it’s just a gimmick, like, the money shaking thing is is a nice phrase, but it doesn’t actually relate to anything concrete in the real world that you can deliver for people, then it’s just a sham, it meaningless. So you have to be able to fulfil your promises Otherwise, otherwise, you’re gonna crash and burn eventually?

Martin Henley
Yeah, well, no one’s busted me yet. I think I’m doing okay. What do I want to say about that? This thing about you say, it’s really difficult for people to understand the value, or to understand what’s written on the outside of the jar that there is, I would go further, I would say it’s actually logically impossible. Because you’re in business. Most people are in business to solve a problem for people. But it’s a problem that they know how to solve. So how could they possibly know how it feels? Not to be able to solve that problem? Do you know I mean, and when they’re looking out, and they’re looking, I mean, it is just like that, it looks to me like it’s the exact they are the exact opposite of the people that they need to sell to, they might have dozens of problems with their own. But this particular problem that they’re resolving is not a problem that they have. Does that make sense? Yeah, I

John Espirian
think, yeah, I would say that the best service providers who can brand themselves well enough, are those who have empathy with the people who are, they’re most trying to serve. And that’s why something like a pen portray ideal customer profile is really helpful because you, you know, what kind of problems that people are really searching for and that they’re struggling with, and you know, your skill set well enough that you can deliver. One of the other challenges is the thing called the curse of knowledge, which is, you know, we tend to downplay our own skills, May, or maybe we’re not even cognizant of them, because we do them all day, every day. Like if you’re a video editor, and you spend all day in Final Cut Pro, and you’re whizzing around the menus, and someone else who didn’t have a clue what you were doing, were looking at you they’d go, that just looks like magic, I have no idea what you’re doing. And yet, the person in control be going well, I’m just I’m just, you know, adding a new transparency layer to this, it’s obvious, isn’t it, you know, you take for granted your own skills without realising that your prospective customer might have no concept of how that works in practice. So the more you can think, like a newbie, and that means having some empathy for the people you’re trying to serve, the more you can reveal the things that they would find valuable, if only they knew they existed, and content is the vehicle to get them to having that understanding that, you know, you can do all these great things and, and maybe you’re the person to trust.

Martin Henley
Yeah, 100%. And you’re right, the most effective I mean, you’re talking about branding, like that’s only something that Coca Cola, or British Airways invest in, like, only the most successful corporations in the world would do that. Do you know, I mean, it’s like, there’s a clue. The reason they’re successful might be because they’ve invested so much in their brand. So there’s that. And then he said, I think it even goes further, I think it goes to the point where lots of businesses really don’t understand the value that they are offering, the value that they’re delivering. Because whether it’s this curse of knowledge, or whatever it is, it seems so normal to them. And then I think that means that they don’t necessarily have the confidence to stand up and start shouting and saying, This is the really sensible things. This is who we can really help. This is how we help them. This is the evidence, you know, if you’re suffering in this way, then then this is how we help. And I think this is where agency becomes really important, like somebody outside of you looking in. And my experience of being an agency was that businesses really, were looking for that validation, ie, you’re doing a good thing, you’ve got a good product, you’ve got a good service, wherever it is. So I think it’s critical like that. And I’m imagining with your particular market, ethical businesses and solopreneurs. That might be even more the case.

John Espirian
I think a lot of them feel hesitant to try and promote themselves. They’d rather maybe stay in stay a little bit hidden because that feels safer. And it’s the people the brash extroverts who go and put about themselves. And, you know, and that’s a shame because I like seeing good hearts and minds when and, and that’s those are the people I’m trying to help you know, I spent more than a decade, writing ghostwriting, often for big corporations who had me under NDA and I was just making rich people richer. And that was that, you know, that’s, that’s a feels like a kind of emotionally bankrupt place to be really, whereas now, you know, those post it notes that you see behind me, they’re the members of my organisation. And almost all of them are single person businesses who are, you know, they’re just trying to make their way in the world. They’re not trying to rip anyone off, they’re doing good things, they’re committed to their craft, and they just need someone to hold their hand and tell them it’s going to be okay, and give them some ongoing help to, to get there in a without sacrificing their morals or whatever. Or putting a bikini on and dancing or something ridiculous, you know, for attention. So yeah, that that feels much more nourishing to me, it’s potentially it’s not going to be the way that I make lots and lots of money. But then that’s not, that’s not a life goal. For me anyway, you know, I’d rather help us a group of people to do good things. So long as I’m paying my bills, that’s kind of all I need. And that’s where we are right now.

Martin Henley
Yeah, and this is a large part of my driver, like, the way I see the world now is basically it’s small businesses versus the corporations. And there is I’m going to, I’m going to produce a video shortly called why the world needs more businesses. But it’s small businesses who deliver all the value. You know, corporations don’t, like people think that corporations are innovative. But they forget that Zuckerberg was a student when he made Facebook, you know, and they think, and all these other things, like everything that was invented was invented by small businesses, but like very rarely, Apple came up with the with the iPad and the iPhone. And so sometimes there’s that kind of innovation. But really, innovation, like the proximity of service to plate Do you know, I mean, like small businesses are feeding families, small businesses are paying their taxes. Small businesses are fixing things, small businesses are supporting other sorts small businesses. So this is where I am now is, you know, I’m definitely looking to empower small businesses in the fight with these corporations, because a mate of mine was a butcher and greengrocer after 25 years, until they moved to Tescos convenience store, like three shops away from his businesses. And within two months, he was closed, you know, he just could not possibly compete. So yeah, this is the war. I don’t know if you’re also seeing yourself as part of that war, but it’d be nice to know that somebody out there was also fighting that battle.

John Espirian
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I’m so used to having bad customer services, especially here in the UK, it’s great when you see small businesses who actually know the names of their customers, and who will just, you know, maybe just check in on them to see if they’re okay. Not not trying to sell them anything, but just, you know, like Apple and McDonald’s and all that. They don’t know your name. They don’t really care about you. I mean, they want your money. But there’s there’s no real care. There’s no, there’s no close interface, as you mentioned there. But yeah, small businesses do that. And it’s lovely to see them thrive. And yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do.

Martin Henley
Yes, the numbers are going up. And I think that corporations are becoming more derelict. Like they are investing less in customer service, you know, and, for me, no, I won’t sign up for a service unless I’ve tested like, can I actually get someone on the phone? If this goes horribly wrong, you know, I mean, because if you can’t, you’re just kind of dead, they don’t care, you know, like one person could absolutely get lost. The last thing I want to say about the British thing is that it is a little bit harder if you are a small British business, because like we have added quorum, and we are, we need to be cool. But it’s really not cool to be seen to be trying, I think in the UK, like, everyone wants you to be successful, but don’t look like you’re trying to be successful. Do you know what I mean?

John Espirian
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, certainly, if you’re out there talking about how much money you made last month, because you know, your business is doing well, that’s that, that might work for an American audience, and they’ll applaud you and go Yeah, that’s a great example, if you did that here. Again, I’m not going to swear but I know what people would be saying in the comments if you were doing that all the time. So it’s just about turning up and just telling me telling an authentic story that you know, and and just showing that you’re trying your best and that you’re just a human being like everyone else and if you do that, if you can do that consistently then I think people will get behind you. But yeah, I think they will boastful thing is just that doesn’t feel right on me at all.

Martin Henley
Here’s something that I wish I’d known when I started my business. Is that the people closest to you want you to do, okay, you know, they want you to be okay. Nobody else gives a shit. When you realise that it’s so what’s the word? Releasing empowering, because it’s like, you don’t want I could fail, like the people closest to me, they’ll be cool with it, you know, I mean, it’s like, and they’ll support me to do something else. And the rest of them really couldn’t care and probably won’t even notice, you know. So I think there’s a very particular dynamic around and emotion around being a small business, you know? Yeah.

John Espirian
Yeah. I mean, if just take any given person on the street, the most important person in their life will be them. And yes, the amount of mental space that you occupy in their mind will be vanishingly small. And so that is quite liberating that they don’t really care. And so you know, alright, you haven’t done you’re here for a video or something that people probably won’t even notice, you know, doesn’t really matter. So, so yeah, stop, stop worrying, and just go and do your thing.

Martin Henley
100%. Yeah, I’m 100% with that. Okay, good. Do you want the good news? Go for it. I think you are eminently qualified to talk to us about personal branding and LinkedIn visibility. Okay, I’m glad. I was always a relief when we get here. Because one day, I’m gonna have to tell somebody like you clearly know what you’re talking about.

John Espirian
You’re a charlatan, let’s let’s cut this now.

Martin Henley
Okay, cool. So that takes us into question number two, which is your opportunity to have a little boast about who you work with, and how you add value to their lives, and maybe some more of the mechanics about, because what’s different about you than the other LinkedIn type people that we’ve had, is that you do this organically? So that’s interesting. Yeah, really interesting. Because the feeling is always like the algorithms got to a place where you can’t achieve anything organically. Does that make sense?

John Espirian
That might be true in a few years time, I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that right now. So I got to, I now pay for a LinkedIn account. But before I did, I got to 34,000 followers on a completely free account, never having paid LinkedIn, a penny. So and that’s, that’s within the last couple of years. So it’s definitely possible. And I think it because of the way LinkedIn is built, they’re not likely to do what Facebook have done with their feed where essentially, if you want visibility, you’re going to have to play some ads on LinkedIn, most of their money actually comes from, you know, selling massive recruiter licences to people for 10s of 1000s of pounds. And people buying things like premium subscriptions, that means that they don’t have the impetus to monetize the the feed in the same way that all of the other social media networks do. And therefore, organic visibility potential will continue on LinkedIn for some time yet until they until they get very, very greedy anyway. Yes, and then in terms of the people I serve, and we kind of already covered this, but I used to serve corporates in my copywriting life, but now I find it much more nourishing to serve small business owners and solopreneurs. And so those are the people I tried to help with my LinkedIn tips for for online visibility and personal branding. And to that end, I kind of concentrated my efforts by monetizing a community, which I did at the start of 2022, which is called the Espresso Plus. And that’s for people who want ongoing support access to me access to other like minded individuals to ask questions, talk, have accountability challenges, and we do things like live q&a is each month and I’ll do a review of people’s content to see what’s working and what isn’t working, and I’ll do a roundup of what’s new on LinkedIn. So all of that stuff is private, inside the community. And it’s deliberately small because I want to keep that personal approach. I’ve been in communities where their aim is growth and so a personality or personalities in attract you to the campfire, but then actually someone else’s is actually toasting the marshmallows you know, it’s not them you came in for the celebrity but but someone else who’s you know, community manager who’s doing the day to day stuff, and I thought I’m never going to do it like that if I ever run one. So I’m doing everything and that means that I can only service you know, a set number of people so I’ve said espresso plus will be at most 300 people and then I won’t be able to cope so I’m going to close the doors at 300 If we get there so yeah, so so people who buy into my community essentially buying into me and they’ll know that I’ll be there to help them every day.

Martin Henley
Cool, because I think the thing is that everyone I mean this is your there’s probably a name for it your give us the I’m in a second. But there’s Is it a missing the boat syndrome is like it’s too late to invest in properties too late to invest in building a community, it’s too late to do all of these things. But if you’ve built this paying community this year, is that what you’re saying? Yeah, that’s right.

John Espirian
That’s after spending five years building my personal brand and understanding how LinkedIn works enough that I’ve got trust in I’ve got social capital in the bank, people think that I’m not going to rip them off. And I’m going to be providing something of value given that I’ve put out five years worth of free content that they found valuable as it was. So I don’t think that someone who’s listening to this who thinks maybe I should start a community, if you’re going from zero, it’s going to be hard, who’s going to trust you with with their money per month or per year, that’s going to be difficult, I think you need to show your evidence of your expertise through public content as much as you can. And then that will probably give you the platform to justify having a paid community, the stronger that your personal brand is, the more likely you are to attract people who think and act the same way as you. So I always talk about attracting good hearts and minds. That’s all I’m really interested. I don’t care if you’re a carpenter, or an accountant, or a logo designer or anything. Or if you’re based in India, or if you’re based in the UK. It’s your personality profile. And you know, the whole kind of ethical side of things that I really like and, and an aversion to buying your way to success. I don’t like the whole ads thing, I’d rather do things organically, which means that it does take some time. But patience, I think is valuable in this game. And as I say, organic visibility on LinkedIn, it might go away in a few years time, that’s true. Because LinkedIn might get greedy and go, Well, this is another thing that we can monetize. But when that happens, LinkedIn will I think, will change completely. Right now they’re earning plenty of money, the profits keep going up for Microsoft, who’s the parent company, they have no need to spoil, you know, contaminate the water by putting ads, you know, and reducing organic visibility. And actually, I don’t know how many users Facebook has got, you probably better qualified, but I guess at least 2 billion. You know, LinkedIn is got 850 million users at the moment. And maybe, between one and 3% of people are actively creating content. That’s not a lot of people. So I think there’s a lot of potential for visibility, yet. They’re making a very concerted effort to attract younger users, people coming over from Tik Tok coming over from Instagram. And there are tools that they’re implementing that appeal to that generation of people. So they’re definitely trying to bring the creative community onto LinkedIn. But there’s still a vast expanse of water that hasn’t been filled yet. So if you’re worrying that, you know, I’ve missed the boat, I don’t think you have if we’re sitting here in five years time, then maybe everything will be saturated, and there’ll be no chance. But if you don’t start building that competitive advantage now, then then you definitely will have missed the boat in some years time.

Martin Henley
Okay, yeah, 100%. And the thing is, you’re right Facebook have been the most effective at closing the door, you know that you don’t get any value out of Facebook anymore. Even as an individual, I think, unless you’re paying, although you don’t you wouldn’t pay if you’re an individual, but they’ve been most effective in closing the door. And I’ve always presented it quite disparagingly about LinkedIn. And I’ve told people that they kind of give away the baby and in charge for the bathwater. I just made that up. I don’t know if that. But it’s like they charge for the they give away the good stuff. And then they charge for the not particularly valuable stuff. So like a premium will get you three InMails like three direct messages in a month are going to deliver anyone any value, like but Sam convinced me that Sales Navigator really does offer some value. So you’re sitting in the middle.

John Espirian
I think I’ve the reason I got a premium subscription, which was just overwhelmed about a year and a half ago, was was just because of reputation. Because I had someone in a training session once someone in Germany said it would be very frank of him. He’s a How can we trust someone who doesn’t even pay for a LinkedIn account? And I thought, if he thinks like that, I might be putting some people off even though you know, I’d like to think that I’ve definitely got the kudos to be doing this. It’s a perception thing. So I’m basically paying for a gold badge. It doesn’t actually do anything to change my life on LinkedIn because I can do all of the things creating my profile, creating video, putting out all the posts, doing my DM sending people voice notes, all that good stuff. And getting organic visibility is not dependent on paying LinkedIn a penny Let me it’s a reputational thing, I don’t bother sending in mails, because that’s the whole cold outreach thing. Like, I’d rather go and comment on someone’s content, connect with them, have a DM exchange, send them a voice note, send them a video, maybe get on a zoom call, it’s a slow ramp up to trust. I wouldn’t just go straight boom, here’s my offer, do you want to join my community? Like who’s gonna say yes to that it’s just a, it’s a pointless endeavour.

Martin Henley
It is a pointless endeavour. And there was something else that I wanted to say about that. LinkedIn is I have to be careful because things people don’t understand that things can be preposterously good. But LinkedIn is preposterous ly good. It is insane. By what I tell people is that LinkedIn is the largest, most dynamic most up to date, most accessible database of business to business decision makers that will ever exist. And I started work in 1993, or something. And my job was to phone corporations, and speak to receptionists and try and work out who did what, that was what I did. Now, anyone could put a list of all 62,000 marketing managers in the UK together, in about a minute and a half, you know, is absolutely insane. The value of this thing, which then leads to the next obvious insanity, which is that people that still people are doing it aren’t doing it? Well, you know, and there’s not actually I don’t think, a significant percentage of people who are doing it. So now what you have to tell us, John, is how to do it? Well, because I’m kind of intrigued how you put together, like, well, I’ve got 10,000 followers, I know that now, thanks to you today. Got no idea how that happened. So I’ve got no idea how you got to more than 30,000. And then also, I’m interested to know how you put together a community, like in the last year, is it more than 200 people now?

John Espirian
Yeah, it’s about 230 people now. So I mean, how did how did I grow my following, it’s really purely through creating content that attracted people to my comments, and ultimately, to my DMs and, and and, you know, we make connections over those over that content. So the content was the was the magnet for all of that stuff, there was no outreach at all, I do sometimes invite people to connect. If, for example, they’ve commented on my stuff, and they look like a nice person, and they haven’t actually tried to reach out, I might go, Oh, thanks for that comment, let’s, let’s have a chat, let’s let’s connect. But generally, people invite me to connect. So it’s been it’s been a slow process. But you know, I gather all my stats. So I kind of know how long it takes to jump from that to the next 1000, if you like. And at my height, which is probably about two years ago, I was jumping 1000 followers every 19 days, it was crazy. It’s it’s slowed right off now. But then I’m not really chasing any kind of growth of followship, I’m just chasing, if I’m chasing anything, it’s people to opt into the community. And those people who have opted into the community usually have been people who have been following me for years, they see all the free stuff. And they will naturally go well, okay, if that’s if that’s what I’m getting for free, then having direct access to you and, you know, other peers in a paid setting, will will be valuable. So some of them have opted into that the paid community actually started as a LinkedIn group, which was free. And I started that because I had this email list. And I was having lots of interesting one to one conversations with my subscribers. And I thought these people need to get to know each other because they really liked each other. And so I created a free group, you know, naively thinking, Now, this will just be an extra little task, no problem. And then 650 people joined it. And it was just like a full time job, just trying to moderate all of that, and introducing people and adding content and answering questions. And I thought, I’ve either got to drop this, or I’m gonna have to monetize it somehow. And I chose the latter. And that actually was much more fulfilling than the copywriting work that I was doing during the day. So I’ve just been the copywriting work and now you know, the people who stuck around are paying my bills. So that’s a, it’s worked out quite nicely.

Martin Henley
I think what you’re doing is underrated, which is actually taking the trouble to select the people that you want to be supporting. And I tell this people, this to people, this is the point of marketing, the point of marketing is to have so many opportunities to sell, or more opportunities to sell than you need. So you can start to be really selective about who you end up doing business with. Because otherwise you’ve just got to do business with everyone who comes to your door. And people who make it all the way to your door. They’re not they’re not the nicest people.

John Espirian
Another marketing thinker did once told me that marketing is like a magnet and if you do it well, if you do your marketing and your personal branding, well, you will attract the right people, and you will actually actively discourage the wrong people. So that means that like minded people opt in to the stuff that you’re doing, they’ll buy your book, they’ll join, you know, buy your course, join your community, and everyone else will go on, like, locally does the cartoons and its content, you know, uses silly slang and his stuff is not for me, and they don’t even trouble you, they move on to experts. And that means that you just reduce your headaches. I think a lot of people don’t realise that one of the values of branding is reducing your headaches because the people who like you will stick around the people who hate you will will kind of stay at the edges and maybe they’ll troll you a bit or something. But essentially, they’re not really relevant to you. And they won’t take up your working day too much. So it’s, it’s a good polarising a personal brand. It’s a good polarising tool.

Martin Henley
Cool. So everything you do is about like people can come into the community, you’re not running campaigns, you’re not producing content from people. You’re not, no, you’re not providing those services. You’re literally supporting them to do it.

John Espirian
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And, you know, obviously, I want like minded people to come in there. And we talk about the point of the community, although I’m most known for LinkedIn. But we’ll also talk about personal branding, creating how best to create content, how best to get ethical online visibility, so that that can extend to things like Google My Business and YouTube. And you know, it’s not just LinkedIn, although that’s obviously my strong suit. And that’s what we talk about all day. So it’s a really busy hub. And as I say, yeah, it’s working out pretty well.

Martin Henley
Okay, super cool. So they get some access to us. They like, if they need you, they get access to you. If there’s availability in your calendar, they get access. Yeah, that’s

John Espirian
right. Yeah, DM me anytime. And, um, I mean, I’m answering all the questions in the group every day. And like I said, don’t outsource anything so that this is my gig? So it’s an easier way to get a closer interface to me. I mean, I, I tried. You know, the whole thing about being relentlessly helpful is I’m trying to help as many people as I can. And so anyone who doesn’t pay me a penny, you can still ask me a question. Box. If a customer’s asking me something, I’ll probably prioritise them first. But I’ll try and help anyone who’s who I think is a good actor. And who needs some assistance? Yeah.

Martin Henley
Yeah. Excellent. Cool. So I suppose if we want to know what that content looks like, then we just need to scroll back through your, your posts and your updates, to see what that is like, is there a formula for producing content that engages people, what gets people to comment all those things

John Espirian
I can, I can certainly give you some best practice tips that I found over the last few years, which is, you should keep in mind, on LinkedIn, you should keep in mind where the breakpoints appear in your content. So if you write, let’s say, you got 3000 characters to write a post, you write a 3000 character post, people are not going to see 3000 characters in their feed, they might see two sentences. So those opening lines are essentially like a mini headline, they’re a promise that says, if you click See More, you’re gonna get more of this kind of thing that you that you’re interested in. So those opening lines are really important. And comments are the fastest accelerant of visibility on LinkedIn, but bar none. And so you need to write your content in a way that opens the door to people contributing. I think a lot of people make statement posts, and there’s no opportunity for the reader to go. Okay, and what do I say to that? You know, that? How do I contribute? So you’ve got to either deliberately leave something out of your content so that people fill in the gaps and contribute that, or the more obvious thing to do is to ask a relevant question, a relevant open question that gets people to share their experiences or provide dissenting opinions if you want. And that’s what helps to get your visibility on LinkedIn. In terms of format, I would, I would mix up different types of contents. You can do text posts, you can do image posts. For me, my data, which I’m really scrupulous with data collection, I find that document posts, which is when you make a text post and embed a PDF or a Word document or PowerPoint, those posts will will get on average about 12,000 views for me versus a text post, which might be in the five to 8000 region, and that’s over four years. So that’s statistically significant difference. Now, I’m not saying that that will necessarily translate to everyone else. But what I always tell people is test this stuff for yourself. Try all of the types of content and see what resonates for you and your audience. I’ve also found that for me, Sunday is my best performing day in terms of visibility followed by Saturday. And Friday is my worst performing day. So those three consecutive days you go worst, second best, best, it’s a quite a jump. And again, you should test these things to see what works for you. But I’m really all about the numbers and understanding what works. And this is the kind of stuff that I, you know, we talked about with members about what approach they should use, and what works for them and how they could tweak. And so I review people’s content and go up, if you put that paragraph there. Or if you change this word to this, or if you move this image here, you know, they’re all it’s all about marginal gains for people. If you do that kind of stuff for long enough, it will work.

Martin Henley
Okay, cool. So is it the case, then, because you’ve given us the message that you know, you were like bamboo, you were growing underground for five years, before you burst towards the sun? Have you? I think I know the answer. You must have found shortcuts then for people who are in your community. Are you seeing that it can happen faster for people now? Are you saying it is a five years underground before you burst into the life process?

John Espirian
Well, that one of the things that inspired me for my book is when my mentor did some research and found he found he interviewed more than 100 people. And he found that the average time to be known in an industry, assuming you’re doing the right things, was about 30 months, which is two and a half years. And I think he’s concluded since then, and I agree with him, I’ve concluded the same that if you follow the principles in books, like content DNA, not necessarily just my book, I think it’s possible to do it in about nine months, I don’t think it’s possible to do any sooner than that. And that’s assuming a fair wind behind you, you know, all conditions being good. I often tell people that what I’m saying is very often an unsexy message, it’s a very simple kind of thing, you know, you define your personal brand, you create content that you think is going to help people, and you just keep showing up, you keep going to the gym every day, basically, rather than going to the gym once and assuming you’re gonna have a six pack the next day, just life doesn’t work like that, you’ve got to show up. And most people don’t have the stomach for that. And they will give up. And in my case, when I got involved, invested in LinkedIn at the start of 2017, I’d spent a whole year studying content marketing the year before, and I saw countless stories of people who got nothing. And then all of a sudden it started working. And for the first nine months, nothing happened for me. And I really mean like no offers at work, barely any comments. If I hadn’t done that study, I’d have been dead off after what probably three weeks. But let’s say six months, I would have been that. And I would have been going around telling people that LinkedIn is a rubbish place pointless. Don’t bother with it. These days, people approach me and say you’ve got 44,000 followers, and you get loads of views of your posts, I want that. And I’ll say, right, we’ll do all of this stuff that I’m going to tell you for a few years. And then let’s have a chat. And they don’t want to do that. So either just go off to another platform, or they’ll maybe try some ads, which obviously won’t work with them. Because all that does is amplify good or bad content. So if your content wasn’t any good to begin with, you’re just amplifying that rubbish. Yeah, that’s not going to you either. So, so yeah, it’s just you’ve got to stick in it. And um, you know that the tagline of content, DNA is about using consistency and congruence. So congruence is the shape of your brand. You know, so having that defined shape, and consistency is turning up and doing the work for days, weeks, months, and probably years before you’ll really be trusted and remembered in your industry. And if you can marry those things clear brand and repeated exposure, then it’s pretty hard to see how you you can’t win.

Martin Henley
Okay, apart from the algorithms are against us. And thankfully, LinkedIn welven leverage their algorithm in that way. Well,

John Espirian
for the time being, that’s the case. But what I’m doing with community, which is another topic that I’m talking about, I’m actually doing a keynote that mentions this next month. And I’ll give you that that exclusive, which is that that affiliation beats algorithm, right. So if you can get people to care enough about you that they want to invest in something that you’re doing, like a community, that’s the most obvious vehicle, you become immune to the algorithm because people are consciously looking out for the stuff that you’re doing. And you’ve got a direct relationship with your customers. You know, we always say in marketing, speak to your customers. How often do we speak to our customers? I know the names of my customers, they’re all on my wall like that. There is no there’s no there’s no friction there. I can get direct access to them and they can get direct access to me. No algorithm can touch me because those people are invested in me but just takes a while for them to care about you. And the sooner you can get them to start caring by building your content, the better

Martin Henley
100% thing is community sounds so old fashioned man. That’s what people were doing in 2016. That’s, that’s old hat. Now,

John Espirian
maybe they probably were on Facebook. But I’ve always avoided the whole Facebook group thing, because I just don’t like the Facebook model really. So So I’ve just avoided that. And I had a quite a downer on LinkedIn groups, because everyone I’d been it was either a spam fest or a ghost town. Yeah, I just thought I’m gonna run a LinkedIn group, it’s gonna have a clear purpose, clear leadership structure. And it’s going to be people are going to be recognised. Like if you make a comment, I’m going to respond, I’m going to support you, I’m going to cheerlead you. And it’s just worked. So community isn’t easy to do. But it’s really valuable. And it is a good way of bypassing the algorithm.

Martin Henley
Hugely valuable. Yeah, hugely valuable. Now, I’m glad you brought up ads, because I don’t want to have conversation publicly ever about LinkedIn without letting everyone know that advertising on LinkedIn is a monumental waste of time and energy and money. I’ve tested it a couple of times, as is my responsibility as someone who used to talk about LinkedIn quite a lot. The last time I tested it, they claimed they sent me, I think it was 18 or 19. Links visitors, at 17 pounds a click. And when I looked at my analytics, three of them had shown up for less than a second. So that was two or 300 pounds, I’ll never see again. So don’t waste your time and energy and money on advertising on LinkedIn. Join John’s community, I think there’ll be a much.

John Espirian
That’s very kind of you to say, I mean, in fairness, I’ve got to say that I do know, people who specialise in ads, and they will say that they can work. So long as you follow certain rules, and you’ve got enough of a budget, I mean, you’re not going to be able to do LinkedIn ads effectively with in the order of hundreds of pounds, you’re probably going to be spending 1000s of pounds per month, and therefore that puts you in into a different category of business, who could probably realistically afford to do that, like as a solopreneur. I, there’s no way I can afford to do that. It can work. And I do know people who actually make a business of it working for others. And so I’m happy to make referrals if anyone ever wants to try them. I’m just not the guy to help you with that. Because, you know, they haven’t worked for me. And I know my approach does work. It just takes a lot longer.

Martin Henley
Okay. Okay, well, I’m happy to say, I don’t think it works. Keep me money, give it to John. That’s what I would say. Okay, cool. So that brings us then to question number three. Now, if you could answer this in a minute or two, because we want to chop this up and put it out onto Tik Tok is where we want to put it and we’ll put it onto LinkedIn and all the places. So what is your recommendation then for people who want to get better at personal branding and LinkedIn visibility?

John Espirian
Yeah, I think I would start by getting a really, really solid, memorable, first 40 characters of your headline, because that’s what people will see, in all parts of LinkedIn, if you make a post, if you make a comment. The first 40 characters should be attention grabbing, but also relevant to your industry. So think about that. And also to just start commenting on more relevant pieces of content, even if you don’t have something that you want to say on your own feed. If you can go and find people who are creating content that’s relevant in your industry, and you leave a thoughtful comment that supports them gives an interesting opinion, something that’s backed by data maybe or your own personal experience. That’s a great way of getting in front of second and third line networks. And comments are the fastest way of getting seen on LinkedIn. So clear headline, really good comment strategy, and that will get you in front of a lot more people.

Martin Henley
Okay, and what’s the investment? If people want to get there over two or three years? What can I be expecting to invest on a daily, weekly, monthly kind of basis? Is money in time? Yeah.

John Espirian
Yeah, I think I think it’s possible to do it in about 20 minutes a day, if you’re really good at what you’re doing, you probably need to spend some time upfront optimising your profile, because that’s your shop window. If someone is really interested in doing their due diligence on you, they’re going to look at your profile. If you haven’t got a photo, or a banner, or a video or featured content, or a well written about statement, you know, these are some of the essential elements, then people are just going to move on. But if they’re all in service of what your ideal reader is, and their their aim towards the call to action that your business offers, then that’s that’s a great starting point. So invest in the profile optimization first, and then go out and do the commenting. And if you’re brave, you can break into the one to 3% who actually creates their own stuff. There’s more time investment required in that you don’t need to go that far. But if you can go and comment regularly on other people’s content, and then you could do that in 20 minutes a day. And that will get you a lot of visibility. Cool ankle do that for free, actually, because all of these tools are available through the free version of LinkedIn. So you don’t even need to pay them a penny and testament to the fact that I’m only paying for the badge because of reputation. It’s not for any practical reason.

Martin Henley
Can I just feed back? I don’t think that’s a good reason to be given Microsoft 600 pounds a year?

John Espirian
Well, yeah, it’s about 480. For me, they keep increasing the price. But whatever price you buy at, you’re locked in at forever. So you know, it’s a business expense on and I kind of justify it, because if, if one client didn’t sign up, because of that reason, I’ve made my money back, you know, so, yeah, I get what you’re saying there.

Martin Henley
Okay, super cool. I’ve just remembered where my 10,000 followers might have come from. Because in 2014, I produced a killer LinkedIn profile video that was ranking on YouTube, for LinkedIn, for like, a long time. It’s not anymore. It’s got 600,000 views, but people used to follow me a lot when that was really working. So that’s testament to it doesn’t have to be just happening on LinkedIn, you know, you’ll get the benefit by investing in all these places. And I’m sure you’d say that if you’re producing content, and you should be spreading the love around a little bit. Is that how you would put it?

John Espirian
Absolutely. And also remember that unlike ads, where if you turn off the tap, you know that all of your visibility goes away, if you’re creating content that’s evergreen, eternal content, as I call it, your you might you’re serving potential customers years down the line. So it’s a really, it’s an investment in your content estates really valuable.

Martin Henley
Yeah. And the other thing I think is really relevant about LinkedIn is that just because of the way people’s careers go, like having a network on LinkedIn is a fantastic investment. People only tend to progress up through their careers, become more responsible, have bigger budgets, all of those things. So yeah, LinkedIn is preposterously good, I think. Okay, cool.

Martin Henley
Question number four, what should people read? You know, anyone who’s written anything about like producing content? Anything like that?

John Espirian
Well, yes, they could read content DNA, which is, was published just at the start of the pandemic, and hopefully, is still got evergreen lessons that will help people define a personal brand and understand what good content actually looks like. But I would actually, do you know, what the one business book I would probably recommend above everything, is it’s not even a business book, but it is relevant to businesses is influenced by Robert Cialdini, which is, I think, published in 1984, has been recently republished, it’s just an absolute masterpiece in, in the way that human psychology works. And it’s based on you know, it’s based on real experiments of how people behave in certain situations. And if you understand that the six laws of influence that he comes up with in that book about reciprocity and authority and scarcity and things like that, those those things will serve you so well, regardless of what business you’re in. It’s just absolutely fascinating. It’s quite a dense book, but it’s, it’s just gold. And in the wrong hands. It could be a weapons manual, because you will learn how people really think and act. So please don’t read it if you’re if you’re a douche canoe. But if you’re not, then definitely check that one out.

Martin Henley
That I think that’s the Bible for me in terms of, I think like marketing books, I think that’s the Bible, because I think that’s what you’re doing when you’re marketing is influencing. But you’re right, if you’re in management, or if you’re leading people, if you’re designing if you’re Yeah, I think that’s an amazing book. Anything else?

John Espirian
I would also recommend Mark Shaffer’s book known, which mentioned the the that contains the interview with 100 plus people about how long it takes to build a personal brand and the four steps that you need to take to get there. And Mark kindly wrote the foreword for my book. And he said that my book was a good companion to his which was a great compliment, because he’s, I think he’s written a masterpiece there. So it’s called known. And he’s Mark Schaefer.

Martin Henley
Excellent, excellent. So we will recommend we’re also going to chop these up and put these out as reading recommendations from the International League of marvellous marketeers. That’s what it’s going to go. This is going to be the brand I think the International League of Martin marvellous market is cool. So I need to check in and see how you are feeling about having been involved in this talk marketing kind of a process.

John Espirian
Yeah, I’m really good. I’m delighted to have been invited and it’s been a it’s been a really interesting conversation. So perhaps I can recommend someone who might want to be in the hot seat for next time.

Martin Henley
Well, 100% that’s where we’re going. So if you’ve had a good experience, you should find it easier to throw a couple of people under the bus. And they need to be people that you can introduce us to so that you know there’s a chance, although it doesn’t sound like you know, Sam well.

John Espirian
Well, I mean, we’ve had a zoom call, we’ve been connected for a while. And she’s mentioned me in a book, which I shouldn’t imagine many people get to mention someone else’s book. So

Martin Henley
that’s especially to do a very similar thing.

John Espirian
Yeah, well, it’s nice, isn’t it? I mean, I always I never see that. Competition. As that, you know, they’re always potential contributors and collaborators. I see I don’t really believe in the whole competition thing. If you’re good enough at what you do, you shouldn’t really be worried about others. I don’t think I’m very much of that mindset. So yeah, it doesn’t the whole competition thing doesn’t bother me at all.

Martin Henley
Excellent. So question number five, who can you throw under the bus? Who might in your, or maybe even enjoy to have a conversation like this with me?

John Espirian
Okay, so I can think of, I can think of a few people actually. So a couple of them are in my community. So one of them is Julian Whitney, who is a, she calls herself a video easy peasy, Queen of LinkedIn. And she helps people with video marketing. And she’s absolutely fantastic. Really patient also used to be a former technical writer, which is interesting. And she’s based in based in Las Vegas, and I think she has five passports or something like that. She’s lovely. And I’m sure she would happily talk to you. She’s got a LinkedIn live show of her own every week. But yeah, she’s she’s, she’s an excellent podcast guest. And the other one is Frank Prendergast, who works with his wife, and they, they do branding and marketing and writing for clients. So they’re very much in the marketing space. But in a very quirky way, you’ll know if you get to meet Frank that he is a, he’s a quirky kind of guy, I’ve actually met him in person, and he’s a member of my community as well. So he’s fantastic, really good heart, and very, very knowledgeable and just endlessly fascinating to talk with. And make the third guy actually, it’s top of mind, because we’ve just done an interview. Ryan Anderson, who is let me describe him as a musical marketing guy, he makes funny music videos for people that help them market in a completely off the wall. But memorable way. So Ryan Anderson, who’s, I think, originally from Zimbabwe, but is based in the UK. And just a nicer guy who struggled to meet and also fascinating, very talented, and is well worthy of opportunities like this, because he hasn’t really been interviewed very often, I think he’s really just breaking into this market. But top top bloke,

Martin Henley
fantastic. So if you could make some kind of an introduction through LinkedIn, or through email, or whatever it might be, then we will pick up the ball and we will run from there. Is it Ryan, who did your little music video?

John Espirian
The content DNA song, which was I wasn’t even expecting. You just said, I’ve done this. I’ve been working on this for three days. I hope you like it. Like, wow. That’s how you make an impression on someone. That’s, that’s that’s personalization taken to the nth level. Yes, yeah, bloke, but while you’ll see how I do my intros, actually, because I will, I’ll do that on LinkedIn. And hopefully, you’ll like that.

Martin Henley
I’m sure I will like that very much. So all that’s left to do, we have gone over by three minutes. I hope that’s okay, and cause your problem for the rest of your day. So what we’ll do now is we’ll say goodbye for the benefit of anyone who is still watching, and then I’ll stop recording, and we’ll say goodbye, like normal human beings, if that’s cool. But man, this has been another fantastic conversation. It’s like it, you know, you hear people saying, slow down, take your time, invest, personalise all those things. And I always kind of think, well, that’s alright for you. If you’ve got all the time and all the money in the world to do that, you know, but to actually hear from someone who’s done it, it only makes sense. You know, it only makes sense that I did another one of these this morning. And the guy was saying, what were we saying it was like, respect your customers, respect your audience. You know, that’s all you have to do. And it’s not what people are doing in their marketing, you know, so that conversation is going to precede this one. But I think they make good bed partners because it’s the same message, you know, invest something in this and the quality of the investment that comes back I think will be better.

John Espirian
Thank you for having me, Martin. And that was the best interview I’ve done with a man united fan. I would say,

Martin Henley
Okay, well I’m surprised Monday night fans are talking to you. If if you hadn’t had such a bad start to the season, we would never have had this conversation.

John Espirian
They would go silver lining and everything.

Martin Henley
Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here, man. Cheers.

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