Digital Chatter Episode #004: Gregg Burkhalter
Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to Digital Chatter. Today, my guest is Gregg Burkhalter who is a recognized authority on LinkedIn and personal branding. So Gregg say hi to everyone.
Gregg: Hello everybody!
Eric: So Gregg has trained countless professionals across the United States. And Gregg actually I’ve almost just barely caught one of your live courses but essentially you help people brand themselves in market themselves using LinkedIn and really you’re known as the LinkedIn Guy. So you know tell everyone a little bit more about how you became this LinkedIn Guy.
Gregg: Well the one thing I can tell you is I can’t take credit for it. It was nothing out planned, it happened. But the one thing I might take small credit for is I recognized something was happening and I went with it. For about three decades I worked in music and broadcasting. Great life, on the radio, hanging out with celebrities. It was music, is what I loved. And about five years ago I lost my job in that particular industry. And I had to make a decision do I stay in an industry where it’s very hard to sell physical product like CDs or do I transition. Well I took the bold move of transitioning. That’s scary when you don’t really know how that process works. Friend of mine felt sorry for me he said Gregg come to my house and we’ll do some strategizing.
Gregg: There’s two things you need, Gregg: you need a business card that looks like you have a job. It’s called a networking card and you need to be on LinkedIn. So I got the networking card printed up. I went to the first business I saw which looked sort of friendly. Walk inside and said I’m looking for a job and I have a networking card. By the way, what is networking. I’d never networked before. I’m not on social media at this time. This is a totally new concept to me. Two hours later I’m still talking to those people and they hire me. So I gave away one networking card and I got a job in marketing.
Gregg: I came back and told my friend I had a job. He was excited but he said one more thing. You still have to be on LinkedIn. Come to my house again. I’ll help you set up your account. So about three and a half years ago I set up my very first LinkedIn account. I walked out of his kitchen and I was like everyone else on LinkedIn. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Well the one thing I did was I came up with a strategy. Right or wrong, I had a strategy and my strategy was, can I build relationships online like I do in person. So I started trying. Six months into my LinkedIn years, I have no idea if making any leeway or not. But I walk into a small networking group of about 10 people. They are talking LinkedIn and I get excited. It’s my opportunity to learn. I sit in the corner and I listen. Within 30 seconds I realized I knew more than anybody in that room.
Gregg: I logged it away and kept doing what I was doing. One year into LinkedIn I opened my email and there’s an email from a local Chamber of Commerce saying Gregg we’re starting a brand new Education Academy. Would you be our very first speaker and do a LinkedIn workshop. I wrote back and said I’m not a member of the Chamber. You have the wrong Gregg. They wrote me back and said we know who you are. You’re the person we want. That was January of 2015 – I said, am I becoming an authority? That was the first time I recognized something was happening. And that’s when I said, could I have become a LinkedIn Guy if I tried? January 2015 I began that process. June of 2015 I got to the point where I either became the LinkedIn Guy or risk losing my brand to someone else.
Gregg: So in 2015 I started my own company as the LinkedIn Guy. It has been amazing the first year I believe I spoke over 50 times to groups, did four broadcast radio interviews. It was just amazing. And since that time I’m on the right. I’m following where it leads me and it’s just so fulfilling to realize that a service you’re offering somebody can be a life changing service for somebody in career transition. And I love that.
Eric: That’s awesome and I know it can be a challenge for people to almost, entrepreneurs especially, to accept who we are. Now I know there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that don’t feel like they’re CEOs or don’t really truly fully really accept their branding of who they are and I certainly, we’re going to talk more about personal branding later on in this but I want to know what are some struggles that you had to deal with over the last couple of years. You know as your trajectory started to get going and then to becoming the LinkedIn Guy.
Gregg: Well the one thing I could not find was the book on how did you become the LinkedIn Guy. So there is no book. I had to write the book.
Gregg: And of course some of those pages got a little torn on the edges as I flipped them. But I’m writing a book about how to become the LinkedIn Guy. One of the fears you have when you become an entrepreneur is this, it’s the fact that in your mind most people have this structured environment that they’re used to. You work for corporate America. You know you go to work 9:00 to 5:00 you know exactly what to expect every day. But as you’re well aware things are changing now. Turning more to a gig economy where people are hired for gigs more on a contractual basis. And so things are changing. That’s what I am I’m a guy who deals with people who probably are at the career point to where they might not go back to working for corporate America, they’ll go to become more of a contract employee.
Gregg: So I tried a lot of these gig economist people in the gig economy. They’re looking for jobs. In fact what I tell people a lot of times is I trained digital immigrants. Someone who did not grow with the computer that has an inherent fear of social media. I remove the fear, I build their confidence. I help them just develop a strategy and grow their brand in the digital realm. One of the things that your seasoned professionals are encountering nowadays is this. They may work 30 years for a company. In the old days when you worked for a company toward the latter part of your career that was when you rode off into the sunset with comfort, with class, with ease. Those days are over. Nowadays the latter part of your career can be the most stress-filled you have.
Gregg:One of the things that bothers a lot of people I train is this – when you’re toward the latter part of your career you don’t get the opportunity to influence company decisions like you did in the early part. You’re more of a fixture than a guy contributing valuable information. That can kind of hurt you because you have so much to give and also it’s just not the same environment as when you first started working so that’s that fine balance between holding on until I can get my retirement or making that tough decision – do I take that step and do what my calling and my heart tells me to do, have a tremendous impact on other people and build my own business model. That’s what entrepreneurs do. They go out of the norm. They take that chance. But they know the rewards are immense. The rewards are not necessarily all about money. There’s emotional rewards too that also make you sleep better at night.
Eric: Yeah that’s very well put as to what an entrepreneur is and that’s a lot about what I’m trying to do with our program here today is dig a little bit deeper inside what it is to be an entrepreneur. Tell me a little more what it is for you and why. Why do you do this every day?
Gregg: It’s rewarding when I speak to people on the lines I will occasionally throw in as this. I have helped more people in the last two years than I’ve helped in the last 20 years. I’m making impacts on people’s lives. I’m not out there selling a commodity. I’m changing people’s lives and providing opportunity and I love that because somebody did that to me. Someone reached out to me as a digital immigrant, which I was, not on social media. No brand. They told me what I should do. I started walking the path. If I can give that confidence to someone else in the same position that’s valuable and that’s what I do.
Eric: That’s extremely important. Why don’t we switch gears a little bit because I know that it’s difficult for someone like yourself to put all your eggs in one basket. You are the LinkedIn Guy and, granted LinkedIn is a very profitable and large company, it can be scary sometimes because as we know LinkedIn was actually purchased recently by another large entity, Microsoft. What happened during that period? I mean was that a turning point for you? Tell me a little bit more about that.
Gregg: Well, I got to tell you when I looked at my news feed that morning that Microsoft might have bought LinkedIn and I got a little queasiness in my stomach I because I, the LinkedIn Guy, does not work for LinkedIn and I don’t work for Microsoft.
Gregg: So I was all uncomfortable then. Well three hours later in my e-mail I see an e-mail come in from Microsoft and I’m really not feeling well. So I cautiously click on that e-mail and the e-mail basically says in honor of Microsoft buying LinkedIn would you please come do a LinkedIn workshop at our Microsoft Store in the mall. And I went are you kidding me?!
Eric: Wow that’s incredible.
Gregg: So that kind of removed a little bit of that fear. Of course they had to go out to corporate to get me approved because I did work for the company but I did that workshop. It went great. Well you know LinkedIn buying Microsoft, I mean Microsoft buying LinkedIn means a lot of things. One of the main things that means is this: anyone that has a LinkedIn profile right now that thinks they can hide. Those days are over.
Gregg: Microsoft is going to take LinkedIn components and embed them into office products liked calendar and Outlook. So when someone is typing an e-mail to you there’s a very good chance that your profile is going to show up or your picture while they’re typing the e-mail. You also have to remember too that Microsoft has other commodities too. They own Skype. I believe Skype’s going to be inside of LinkedIn very soon for phone calls. Whether you know it or not LinkedIn has already tested native video, posting video on LinkedIn. In fact if you will go to the iTunes store right now there’s an app called record that LinkedIn put out designed for people to use their cell phone to record a 30 second answer to a question and load it directly to LinkedIn. They don’t have the ability to use it yet, they haven’t rolled it out. But they are testing that process. So what the merger means is unlimited but what it does mean is it’s going to be with you and in your face the whole time because you can’t hide anymore your brand has to be out there. People recognize who you are and want to engage with you.
Eric: Sure and it sounds like things are starting to get so integrated with Microsoft and all their other products and you know that brings me into personal branding and you and I talked about this. Personal branding is not just one thing. It’s an all encompassing and you know tell me a little bit more about what is personal branding for you.
Gregg: I spoke to a high school earlier this morning and I love talking to schools and universities about personal branding because when you go into a room of people with the Facebook mentality which is more like you know personality branding I start talking personal branding. First thing I have to do is put a little fear in their hearts to recognize the value and importance of what I’m talking about. Talking about personal branding – if I were going to ask someone what their personal brand is the last person I’m going to ask is that person. I’m going to ask the people around them because your personal brand is not what you say you are it’s what others say you are. So until others are believing what you you want your brand to be you’re not personally branded. And another thing I can tell you is this – your LinkedIn profile is not your personal brand. That is where you have to find what you want your brand to be but until people believe it, It is not your brand and you can’t grow your brand on linked by yourself either.
Gregg: Personal branding is not a solo mission. You have to have other people who recognize the value and respect your brand. Likewise you might respect their brand and together each of you can work together to create a digital hotline to help the other grow their brand. So it’s a it’s an ongoing process and it’s not one where you say OK I’ve built my profile, I’m branded. No. Your branding will be going on from now until you quit working. So you need to make sure you’re documenting all your wins along the way because they add to your credibility.
Eric: That’s a great point you know documenting these things and you know hey I look at my LinkedIn weekly if not daily. And I think about some of the projects that are coming up that I’m about to finish and how I want to get them on there. What do you recommend for someone who has a so-so linked in profile where do they start with all of this.
Gregg: Well the first thing they do there’s a setting in privacy and settings that you can change to which says “Do you want to share your profile and edits.” Go to privacy and settings and change that to no. If you don’t, your connections are going to be mad at you for changing your profile so much. Every time you change your profile and that switch is on yes, everyone gets notified on their news feed. You don’t want that to happen. So change that button to no. Once you do that, look at your profile. The three most important things you’re looking for is this: your picture, which should be professional, with your face about 60 percent of the image with minimal background, no kids’ photos dog photos or logos. Second thing your name of course is important. But the other thing is your headline. That is the words below your face and your picture. That’s not where you work.
Gregg: That’s what you are. So for example below my headline if my headline said CEO at GreggBurkhalter.com. How many people do you think would engage with me on LinkedIn? They wouldn’t even know I do that. So mine you know says LinkedIn training and strategy branding coach because I want people to figure out what I do. Believe it or not people are not hunting for you on LinkedIn most of the time. They discovered you and they discovered you by seeing you on their news feed they see your face they see your name. They see the first few words of your headline that is the first opportunity they have to figure out is this someone I want to engage with. I call that process fishing.
Gregg: When you’re fishing on LinkedIn by putting your brand out there, you attract people to you and your brand grows. Unfortunately most people on LinkedIn don’t fish – they hunt. They get on LinkedIn and try to hunt customer and fire a sales shot out, which is wonderful if the customer buys. Now if that customer is put off by the pushiness, you might have lost that relationship for your entire career. Though hunting can be sometimes hazardous. If you’re hunting and that’s all you do, your brand goes nowhere because all that hunting is under the linked and radar. Nobody sees you. You got to hunt and fish because both are necessary to grow your brand name.
Eric: That makes sense and you know I look at a lot of people that are checking out my profile. That’s something I do regularly because I want to know who looking at me. You can mark yourself private or public you know depending on what features you have on or off. Let’s do a scenario of someone who is looking to hide but wants to actually develop a relations with someone so say I just went to a networking meeting and I got a business card of someone who I think may be interested in my services but I didn’t have a chance to really connect with them well. How can I use LinkedIn to develop a better relationship with them.?
Gregg: Well the first thing you can do is if you don’t want this person whom you’ve just met to know that you’re looking at the LinkedIn profile there’s a simple way around that without doing anything tricky. Log out of LinkedIn, Google their name and they have a public profile.
Gregg: If you look at their public profile most times it has everything as the regular LinkedIn profile has minus the pictures. You can already see all their background. If you look at that and say you know what there’s something here. Log back into LinkedIn, send a request – a handwritten note – to connect to that person saying that you enjoyed meeting them and you looked forward to maybe talking to them more in the future and invite them to connect. When they connect with you respond back to them tell them you’re honored to have them in your network and hope to talk to them soon. You’ve already talked to that person twice. So in 30 days if you decide you want to move the conversation forward send them a note maybe about having coffee or something. When they get that note and it comes into their LinkedIn e-mail box, it’s the third conversation you’ve had. It’s not a cold solicitation. So that’s like writing personal notes mean a lot. If you write a personal note it is saved in your LinkedIn mailbox.
Eric: Yeah you bring up a great point. LinkedIn auto-populates that information for you. But I always delete and erase that. You have to put in something personal. I’m reminded of a story where I connected with a fairly young man. He’s about five or ten years older than I am but back in the day I chatted him up I don’t know how I got connected with him but he was like a friend of a friend. And this man has sold businesses, been an advisor to ten plus businesses and I was really interested in meeting him and I knew I was going to be in San Francisco and I knew that he worked out of there and I just kept drumming up the conversation every week up until I landed in San Francisco.
Eric: And he eventually accepted an offer to grab lunch with me and here I was having lunch with a man who now at this point has sold multiple companies, one of his companies sold to Google, and never would have happened had it not made that connection and had LinkedIn really help me out with that because he could visibly see who was connected and how we were connected and I could ask him questions you know how were you connected with this person. And sometimes it’s a good story and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s just that you know I think I’ve met them at a networking event and really don’t know them. But still you’re opening a door to so many things.
Gregg: I have a similar story to that, is somewhat similar. There’s four things I look for when somebody invites me to connect. First thing you’re looking at is can I help the person because I’m all about relationships first which is the tagline of my company. The second thing I look at is can they help me. The third thing I look at is is this person of such high stature that if I brought them into my LinkedIn network they might be a game changer for somebody I know. And then the fourth thing is sort of a new one. Are they a friend or family member who would be mad as all get out if I didn’t connect. That’s the four, guys. Here’s an example of number three: I saw a major past president of a company based out of Atlanta on LinkedIn and I took a chance on connecting with this individual. I connect to this person and 90 days later this person’s LinkedIn account got hacked. So I call this person up and said Mr. So-and-so your account has been hacked and they told me that it’s working fine, gave that person my cell number and said reach out if I can help.
Gregg: The call came 30 seconds later they were ready to pay me any amount of money in the world to retrieve their account. Of course I didn’t charge him anything. I helped him get their account back. Now this individual and myself we talk monthly we are friends, we’re connections. I’ve never asked him for a favor but he will be a game changer for someone in my network down the road. I just don’t know who it is yet. So yeah don’t just look for immediately what is in it for me. Look for people in your network because as I said earlier we’re all in this together. We all depend on each other’s pipelines and connections to make those key contacts
Eric: That’s a great point. You know I try to think of different ways to use LinkedIn effectively and sometimes you can use it for making those one on one connections and in other times you can use it to ask genuine business questions you can join groups, there’s affiliations you can be a part of. I have seen a lot of posts go viral when and I’m sure anyone who’s on LinkedIn has seen this but where someone will post two or three different logos and they say you know vote A, B or C and you see these posts just grow and grow and grow and I want to know from you what it what are some of the most effective ways that you see people are using LinkedIn?
Gregg: Let me tell you the most ineffective way. The most ineffective way is to get on LinkedIn with an attitude of I’m going to show people what I know and that’s all I’m gonna do.
Gregg: OK. Because I’ve learned that until you develop sort of a mini tribe of followers people that actually seem to recognize that you have something worth hearing, don’t spend a lot of time putting information out there because your pipeline is so narrow. The return on what you’re getting is smaller. Build relationships. Get some branding partners in place then start doing some of your more longer detailed information. I will tell you a simple link to an article is powerful if it’s consistent and well presented at the right time of the day it can be powerful. So it’s not so much about all you know. It’s just about building relationships and creating a pipeline. In fact every day there’s three things I do on LinkedIn and I have been doing it for the last three years plus.
Gregg: The first thing I do is I try to find someone to help. I want to make an impact on somebody else’s ability to grow their brand. The second thing I’m going to do to try to grow my network because my network has to be growing or become stagnant. And the third thing I do is I try to share information that would be beneficial to my network. Now because I’m a LinkedIn Guy do I always share LinkedIn? No. If I did that I’d be totally predictable but the main thing that would happen is this – I would limit my pipeline so only people who like LinkedIn would like my stuff. So I want to talk to the Facebook people I want to talk to people who want to know about personal branding. I try to move it across the board and make sure that it fits people and what they want to hear.
Gregg: In fact there’s two things on LinkedIn I’m always trying to protect this in the forefront of my mind. One is my personal brand and the other thing I’m protecting at all times is the newsfeed of my connections because I realize everything I do they see it. And the last thing I want you to do is decide my information is not good or it’s too much because they can hide my update or they can remove the connection. If they do that there will never be a relationship there. So you got to be balanced in what you do. You got to have a strategy but I will tell you on LinkedIn the secret to growth is helping others first. That’s the secret.
Eric: That’s a good point. You know within the last couple of months I have began to talk about the people, all the influencers in my world and I will tag them in posts. I will congratulate them when I see them in PR posts and I have found that more people end up liking my posts and sharing my posts talking about someone else than any other thing that I posted that was insular or something that was benefiting myself and really what I’m doing is you’re exactly right. Instead I’m growing my brand because I’m helping other people out and moving the needle forward for them and little by little that grows. My name will come up in their head more likely when it comes to whichever product or service that I have.
Gregg: Yeah that’s one of the things that’s changed in the last couple of decades here. It’s not who you know or what you know. It’s who knows you know. So on LinkedIn you’re walking that fine line between present enough to be recognized and not out so there’s so much of noxious. It’s a fine line that you walk but people will recognize you and know you and that’s how I become aware of you. They start buying into your brand and they engage with you.
Eric: So tell me how can people follow you? How can we get a hold of you?
Gregg: Well believe or not I’m actually on LinkedIn. I have a profile. It’s LinkedIn.com/in/GreggBurkhalter. Please connect with me write me a personal note tell me about yourself I’ll be honored to do that but also please have a picture and I don’t want to see your pet. I have a website too you could go to: GreggBurkhalter.com. And if you really want to punish yourself I have some podcasts on there where you can hear me talking in more detail about hunting vs fishing and building relationships. I also did a podcast recently with a gentleman about my whole career perspective, similar to what you and I were sort of doing but a little bit even more in-depth as to all the different junctures where I hit a roadblock and had to turn around and move in different directions. So please do that but mainly if I can ever help you in any way please reach out to me and if I have the opportunity and I have the ability, I will.
Eric: That’s perfect. That’s great Gregg. Do you want to leave everyone with anything else. Last tidbits of information here.
Gregg: OK this is on the bottom of every e-mail I send out. And I believe it’s very important: relationships are key to personal happiness and professional success. Build relationships, put them first.
Eric: Awesome. Appreciate it! Goodbye.
