Intrapreneurship: The Best of Both Worlds? with Mickey Anderson

Mickey: [00:00:00] posting those personal brand content.
You're going to relate to your audience. You're going to connect with them. They're going to see you as a person, not a sale. And when you do show up in their DMS, they're like, Oh, you're the one who also talks about how hard motherhood is or how, you know, how important it is for me to align with my faith when I'm in my work, whatever that is.
And then they're going to be way more open to having a conversation with you because they know the conversation is going to be good or not. Regardless of the sale. So that's, that's one component. We find two to three days a week is, is great. and there's a whole system behind this, but two to three days a week of posting is great.
But again, posting alone, isn't going to do it. Because if you know anything about LinkedIn and these fickle algorithms, they will not show your stuff to everybody regardless. It's all about engagement. [00:01:00]
Dustin: Welcome back to the seven figure leap. I have one of my favorite people in the world, as my, as my guest today. And, I met Mickey Anderson who we're going to learn all about here in just a second, in a really fun way. And that was that I was a guest on her podcast. I believe we actually connected through pod match, which is a software, a friend of mine, Alex Sanfilippo runs.
And, you know, pod match has been really good to me, but not as good as. This interaction and this conversation. So I had this amazing connection with Mickey. We got the end of the call and I remember she was like, yeah, we should stay in touch. And I did like horrible job following up. And I was like the worst guest ever.
And then she reached out to me. Thank God. And was like, I really want to know more about what you do. And she ended up joining my podcast profits accelerator program. She was a founding member. In the seven figure lead mastermind. She's no longer in that for very good reason, which we're going to get into.
so Mickey, it's really fun to reflect back and think about how we met. You're one of the best podcast hosts. Ever. And I mean that totally sincerely. [00:02:00] And so it's really cool to be the host here and have all the pressure to interview
you as well as you interviewed me. So please introduce yourself and we'll kind of get going here with our interview.
Mickey: Oh, thank you so much. That's so kind. It's an absolute honor to be here. like Dustin said, I'm Mickey Anderson. So I am head of branding and content at concertina. We are a business process outsourcing company. So essentially an offshoring company. We come in and serve companies at a bunch of different stages, mostly over the 3 million mark, and we help install a growth plan.
Systems that they can scale and set themselves up for an eventual exit, or at least that they have the potential for a really successful exit. So that's where I spend my days. And, it's, it's very serendipitous that I'm here and Justin and I have followed, followed each other throughout the past couple of years.
And it's just been an awesome way to see the progress that both of us are making.
Dustin: Yeah, it's really wild. to think of that origin story and then to think about where you're at. And I think to give people context, it's like, Oh, wait a minute. Why would this amazingly [00:03:00] talented woman who's working for this really cool company, as a, you know, an employee. Why would she have ever been in Dustin's orbit for entrepreneurs and why does she have a podcast?
Right? And so there's a lot more to this story. But I do want to highlight is that I would call Mickey now like an intrapreneur. And if that's not a term that means a lot to you, it's someone who's very entrepreneurial and gets a lot of free reign and gets to use their talents and with a lot of freedom.
But inside of someone else's company, and I'm very intrigued by this. I feel like this is a bit of my identity, even when I was an engineer. And I think there's a lot of people listening who have been entrepreneurs who maybe want to be an entrepreneur. I think there's a lot of benefits to this path. and so I want to unpack that, but I think to get there, Mickey, do you want to take us back as far as you feel is relevant, whether you know, it's.
Birth or high school or, or your first job, then kind of give us a little trajectory of your career. And so we can kind of follow how in the world did you end up at concertina doing this really kind of niche service that you do now,
Mickey: Yeah, absolutely. I won't go far back as birth
cause then I'll give away my,
Dustin: I remember the day I was [00:04:00] born.
Mickey: Oh no. So, um, I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. I've been a builder. I love building things from scratch. I love trying things to see what works and what doesn't work. And I'm not necessarily like an industry focused person per se, at least I wasn't for a very long time. I love to jump. I get bored really easily.
And so I had, While having many different jobs, I always had multiple side hustles on the go, whether it was running fitness classes or personal training or doing life coaching or executive coaching. And all the way through my career, I've always just built, felt like the need to build things to help people.
and I was lucky enough to start my marketing career in more of a corporate setting. So I worked for a fitness company and I was a, the manager, but I also had the job of growing the business and then growing all of our contractors businesses. So we had nutritionists and chiropractors and physiotherapists and personal trainers, all working for the company and they all stunk at marketing and getting clients. But we needed them to get clients and get good at marketing because we made money off of them. [00:05:00] They were a big component of our revenue. And so my job was to get in and figure it out. And I had no background in marketing, but I did have a degree in psychology. And so I get people, I was always a very good communicator.
So I was able to interview clients, interview the talent, interview our team and come and build essentially like my very first marketing plan and rolled that up and ended up growing the company significantly. And that. kick started my marketing career. I jumped in and started my own agency, my first agency, which was a copywriting agency.
And we worked in health, wellness, and fitness, of course, because that's the way I felt most comfortable. Grew that significantly. But as for many people, life, life hits you. Sometimes life changes. My husband is in the military and he traveled a lot to say the least. It was, 300 days on average a year, he was gone and we had a young daughter and then COVID hit and it was just a lot of chaos in our world.
And so I shut the door on that and decided to focus on consulting for a while. And that's where I started getting into working with clients like I'm [00:06:00] working with now was getting in and understanding their big marketing
departments, their strategies, and helping them grow. the itch to build again, built my second agency, which was PPC and SEOand then all of a sudden I got this dream opportunity.
a friend had recommended me, because of my background, my, my chops and content marketing and presented me to concertina, the company I'm working for now. And lo and behold, they gave me the opportunity of a lifetime to come in and do what I love with the coolest clients. And it's just been the most amazing experience ever and I can't rave enough about it.
So I feel like I got blessed by a fairy godmother in the middle of the night and granted the most awesome job. And so once I received that job, I unfortunately had to leave Justin's mastermind because life just wasn't fair. Just took a massive turn. but it's been spectacular and, and I'm very, very happy wearing it.
Dustin: love that. Yeah. So, yeah, I kind of let all that stand, you know, as it is. I [00:07:00] did not, I guess I did it, I guess at some level I did not realize you were actually a fitness instructor and before you got into the marketing.
Mickey: CrossFit. I was like, because I was a swimmer too. So I was a competitive swimmer in college. I swam D1. And so for those of us who leave athletics and I don't know what we want to do with our life, we naturally end up some, someone's personal trainer, like just the way it goes.
Dustin: Yeah. I love that.
Mickey: you put me in that role and I'll work my way up into management. That's just the way it goes.
Dustin: That's really cool. So, but if you kind of follow along that trajectory, and I do, and we're going to zoom right into present day and talk more about the future and actually Mickey has some really cool personal branding, uh, LinkedIn lead acquisition strategies that we're going to spend at least a third of the, of our time together on.
but I just can't help myself. I do want to like go back a little bit in reflection mode because I really care about like, why do people do what they do and where's their motivation? And so I picked up with Mickey about two years ago, hosting her own podcast, running this agency. got to know a lot about her personally and with her young daughter [00:08:00] and her husband's service in the military.
And, yeah, I just felt a real, a real bond with her and a lot, and personally and professionally. and I knew you were a swimmer and then one day, I got quite a glimpse of her arm. I'm like, you have like the sweetest tattoo, like the sleeve and all these like new layers of onions started peeling back.
I'm like, who is this woman? And so I did not know that you were a fitness instructor, that that's how you got pulled into marketing. So that's really cool. so anyway, that's all really cool, but I guess one of the things I picked up on very, very strongly is like variety, right? And I think that's pretty common for entrepreneurs, but what would you say when you reflect back?
do you feel like that's like you short change yourself by changing too frequently or you're like, nah, like that's the only way I stayed sane, I had to switch kind of industries and focuses along the way. Cause it sounds like maybe every couple of years you've kind of changed your identity in a sense of what you do professionally, is that accurate?
Mickey: Oh, that's super accurate. Yeah. And you know what? I could look at it as, oh man, I wish I would have stayed with the one thing and done the long term career and built the thing, but I can tell you, I'd have been so bored. [00:09:00] So bored. I love new problems. I love, exploring and learning and creativity and wrapping my head around new subjects.
I've just naturally loved school. I'm one of those odd people who really enjoys taking courses and being in school. I went back to school twice to further my education. Like I'm that person. so for me, it was just a natural hopping. It drove my husband nuts.
Dustin: cause he's
Mickey: He did not
Dustin: full on military career, obviously a very intense job traveling 300 days a year and maybe not so great places all the time. so that's a really interesting dynamic too, that you're sort of the stable, I'm using air quotes. You're sort of the stable one because you're home with the, with the.
Child, but yet you're entrepreneurial. And so you're trying different things. You're launching new companies. Like that's a pretty interesting dynamic. I would think,
Mickey: That made for a really good dinner conversation whenever he was home. But I had the benefit of it. I had the benefit that he had this really stable job, although very dangerous, and he was gone all the time. It was stable. And he had started the military when he was 18, right at high school. You know, there was a war going on right to Afghanistan.[00:10:00]
Like he was in it forever. and so he could never really understand my need for change and moving around and trying new things, but he fully embraced it. And although sometimes it was hard, he just Gave me a lot of trust. and I, I appreciate that very much. And now obviously it's all kind of coming together and paying off and he's seeing the pieces and now he doesn't even question it.
He's like, you just do whatever you got to do. We'll be fine.
Dustin: yeah, I love it. All right. Well, I've dwelled enough we'll zoom in now to resume up to present day. And so, I knew a little bit about concertina. So yeah, it's kind of the conversation Mickey and I had to have. So we've, we've shed, I would say a fair amount of tears over the past several years, mostly positive, some, you know, some not negative, but some just, you know, life circumstances that we both dealt with and be able to share that.
and you know, my son just entered his military career and so there's, there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there, but in the moment that Mickey as a founding member of the mastermind and one of my just right hand women, like one of
the best people I've been around the past couple of years has had such an [00:11:00] instrumental part and.
Helping me take on the identity I have and as a leader in this business and mastermind leader and all those things, you know, we had this not tough, but you know, a conversation. It's like, Hey, Dustin, I gotta leave the mastermind. It's nothing personal, but you know, I'm taking getting a job and like, you know, on Thursdays when we meet, I'm going to like be holding team meetings.
I'm like, Okay. That totally makes sense. I hate to have anyone leave, but you know, you're not doing the entrepreneur thing, you don't necessarily have that availability to be there for our meetings when we're, when we're there and do an in person events and stuff. so that was just like the reality.
so that's, that happened this year. So you moved over to concertina and, but as we started talking today, before the interview, I got a much better understanding about what you do. And while I knew you were an entrepreneur, cause like, how does Mickey not operate as a, as an entrepreneur inside any organization?
I didn't realize it was like so directly. Tied to entrepreneurship and working with founders. So can you explain a little bit about like what you do day to day? Kind of what's the overall outcome that people seek when they hire concertina and get to work with you?[00:12:00]
Mickey: Yeah, absolutely. So I have two functions in the organization. One, I run our internal content branding department. And so any content that's being created by the company goes to On my desk. So I am the last quality assurance check for pretty much anything that happens at the company. both for our company's marketing material, but also we have a lot of clients who have personal branding services or LinkedIn lead generation services, and we're creating content for them.
And so that goes through me. So I lead a team of copywriters and we have a creative team and we work together to build the personal brands of these incredible founders, and drive their lead generation as well. So there's that side where I run that department internally and tackle a bunch of, internal marketing.
But then there's the other side where I also work with our clients directly. I come in essentially as a fractional CMO would be the traditional term, but we don't like to use that term because it's not really the most empowering title anymore. so I come in more as a facilitator. So I work with the founders to [00:13:00] Evolve their marketing strategies.
Usually they're slow. They're fragile. They're bloated. They're spending lots of money and not really seeing any traction. Their business development or sales team are working their butts off and doing all of the grunt work. And they're like, what, what is happening with our marketing? We're putting stuff out there, but nothing's happening.
So my job is to come in and help them build that strategy. And then I help them build their marketing team. And so concertina is an offshoring company. We have, we hire the top 1 percent of talent in the Philippines who are trained. They have the SOPs and the processes, and they are the best of the best.
And so the companies will hire our team members to come in and And be their marketing department. And I oversee basically the installation of a marketing department in a company. So I helped build the systems, get them in place, make sure everyone's running on track. We have our KPIs, we know what we're doing.
We've got the plan communications happening and I set them up for success for the long term so that I can eventually leave and they can blossom with a fully functioning marketing department.
Dustin: That's awesome. It sounds like a pretty [00:14:00] ideal fit for you personally, because you get your hand over here and the, your own company in the company that you work for and other companies, content and personal branding. And as I teased earlier, we're going to. Do a little bit of a deep dive into LinkedIn and all the, all the juice that we can squeeze there.
and you kind of get these three to six month stints with companies who are looking to, kind of remove the bloat, get some fresh perspective, get a, get, get some real, a real marketing engine in place that maybe they've lacked for a long time.and then you get to move on to the next one, right? So like you, this entrepreneurial itch that you have to scratch, you have the stability of being in a company, but you also have a lot of moving parts, a lot of freedom, and you get a lot of that variety that we've heard since your, you know, birth.
so that's awesome. I mean, is that, is that a pretty good summary of like, that's kind of your day to day, you feel like you're. Working a lot of different businesses. You just don't happen to own them personally.
Mickey: Well, and the great part, the thing that I love most, and it doesn't matter whether it's my business or someone else's, the thing that I love most, I love building the thing and setting up the systems and then leaving. I don't want to stay and manage it. I'm [00:15:00] not the person who stays in and wants to, you know, continue on forever and hold on to this baby.
I want to let it go, and see it thrive and let it evolve over time. And so for me, it's an ideal situation because I get to set up this amazing thing, get it going. Christine and ready to go and optimize and then move on to the next one. And for me, that's a lot of fun. I also, I'm very fortunate to the, the companies that we're working with.
We're not just growing them. I think that's the part that a lot of people miss out on is they think it's just about growing a business. It's, it's not for us. We're trying to increase the value of the business as well. And so it's not just about top line sales. When we come in and rebuild this marketing department.
And many other departments in the organization. I just work in marketing, but concertina, we work in the entire organization. We're looking at finding capital
that we can reinvest into growth initiatives to increase the value of the business. So that means cutting out bloat, looking at our subscriptions.
What, like what is going on here? What are we wasting money on? Where, what's actually working or what will work. And then how do we make sure that this is functioning well so that the business. Can be [00:16:00] set up for a successful exit. If that's the goal, which for many owners, then most of the companies we're working with is eventually either an IPO or an exit.
And so that's really a big part of it is making sure that it's a repeatable systemized framework that anyone can come in. It's agile, it's proven, and it's going to continue to work. And that's what sets them up for success.
Dustin: that's very exciting. And I feel like that is that by perk the ears up of some people listening, because, you know, we've I've been through this a lot in my own. I've been through a couple of companies been through, you know, an entrepreneur and a couple engineering companies was partner and all that stuff.
But, you know, This year very timely is like trying to figure out what in the world of seven figure leap, like what, you know, is it a quote unquote solopreneur forever? Is it like a build into a bigger business? And with that, you know, all these questions of like scaling and like, do I plan for an exit?
Even if I don't want to exit, I want that optionality. And like, that's probably like the best way to build a business. And so it's really cool that you're in an environment where most of the people are either [00:17:00] wanting to exit or IPO. And therefore they realize like, Okay. I have a cool thing here. I've created this cool business.
It's not maximizing its own value. and in many cases actually want to exit. And you, you mentioned this to me earlier, like there's a philanthropic arm. So it's not exiting at, you know, to go sit on the beach and drink the Mai Tais because
I personally, I mean, you can do that, but like, and maybe for like six months, that'd be cool.
But I think that would get pretty boring. so it sounds like a lot of your founders have, you know, You know, they're, they're companies that were created out of a passion. They want that passion to leave a legacy and that legacy could be in someone else taking over the company and having it thrive, but also be able to do other cool stuff with the money.
is that like the environment that you're get to live within each day?
Mickey: Yeah. Yeah. It's so fun. So the owners that we work with are all impact driven, so they all understand the value of doing good business for good of setting people up for success of building a person centered organization of giving back. [00:18:00] It's not about give me more or get me more. It's how can I contribute more and ultimately they all trust that that will come back and it does.
and so for a lot of these. Businesses, the timing is really good at the exit because they can create a mass impact philanthropically with that exit. The other piece of it is also we build their personal brand so that when they do exit, they get the opportunities to be on boards and serve in different organizations that are more in alignment with the passion they have now, where they can continue to have impact.
They can continue to contribute, but in a different way. And that's really important as well. So it's not just necessarily, I want the cash or I want to make a big. You know, Push to donate. I also need something to do with my time. And if I've set myself up properly as a person of influence, I've had authority.
I've people know my name. They trust me. They like me. It's way easier to get opportunities to sit on other people's boards or to be brought into organizations and that sort of thing. So it's the next stage. Most entrepreneurs don't want to [00:19:00] retire per se, but they do want a new chapter.
Dustin: I love that. So this is really cool because we're going to kind of go from this point forward and we're going to talk marketing and which is one of my favorite things to talk about, through this perspective. And I think if you're listening, you're like, Oh wow, this is like. Opening my mind up to new, like, I just kind of had a bit of a light bulb moment.
I'm like, well, what if I did sell this, you know, who knows 10 years from now? and then I could be like an advisor to both charities and businesses and like have this personal brand and be able to do this, just the 1 percent of stuff I really want to do. like that's, that's pretty awesome. And these people have created.
Through, their own ingenuity and creativity. They've created something of tangible value. They come to concertina and they get to work with Mickey to like, maybe multiply what that's worth on paper and in an exit or IPO. And then they have this freedom to go kind of do the next chapter. so we're going to talk
all about specifically marketing on LinkedIn, to do that and build that personal brand for people listening who are like, There's more to this.
There's a [00:20:00] lot more to this whole journey. I would invite people to go find the Ryan dice episode that I did. It was really about operating systems and like, how do you set up a scalable company with operations? And I did 1 very recently with Barrett Brooks who helped grow convert kit from 3 million to 30 million.
they did not exit, but he exited the company and took his shares. And he talked in that episode about kind of 18 months sort of hiatus that he had to go do a lot of cool stuff personally. and he talked a lot about team building and this whole idea of like culture and leadership and team building.
I loved all that stuff, but I really love marketing. So Mickey, I'd love to kind of transition now. So as people are thinking about their own personal brand, especially, but their company, and, they're like, man, I really need better systems and marketing. We could obviously do a whole series on this.
Maybe we'll do that at some point. But today, if we could just hone in on one specific strategy, I'd love to kind of hand the mic over to you for however long it takes. I'll interject as I have questions, but I'd love to just let you jam on LinkedIn and LinkedIn for personal brands and lead [00:21:00] generation and all the things that you want to kind of highlight for our audience.
Mickey: I'm excited. so the reason why I love LinkedIn in particular, so the most of the businesses we work with are B2B. They're not necessarily retail or e commerce. We're talking business owner to business owner and LinkedIn is by far the best platform for that space. It's just set up for it.
So it's fantastic. And if you know anything about LinkedIn, you know that nobody checks the company profile, company pages just don't perform. They're there essentially as a credibility check. They're like a brochure. Like we exist. We're real. Check out our website. Don't
stay here.
Dustin: logo that's like linked from your personal page. That's really the only reason you have the company page. Yeah,
Mickey: That's it. That's it. And so we don't really focus on the company page. Yes. We'll repurpose content and pop it on there and whatnot, but it's not the
focus. That's just the credibility check that the organization exists and you can be searched. The real point is to build the connections and generate the leads that you need to continue to grow while also establishing yourself as a person of influence in your industry, in your zone of genius, [00:22:00] in your realm.
And so there's usually one way that if you raise that this goes really wrong, people just start hammering cold messages on LinkedIn and they'll post sales stuff about their product or service or company. And none of that works. I mean, I'm sure if you looked into your inbox on LinkedIn, it's probably got 20 whole messages from people who are like, Hey, let's book a call so I can sell you.
No one's got time for that. Nobody cares about that. So that's not what we do. We kind of looked at what are they all doing? And then how can we do the complete opposite of that? Cause it's terrible. So when we're thinking of building our personal brand, it's really about building relationships. And I know you're going to align with this so much testing because we're on the same page here.
It's all about building relationships and relationships. Don't start with a sale. Relationships start with genuinely caring and curiosity and sharing, connecting with someone for real, not just posting salesy content. And so what we do is we start to create content on LinkedIn in three categories, that will break out into a bunch of different topics or pillars, but it's really simple.
It's your [00:23:00] professional zone of genius. What is the thing that you bring to the table, wherever you go, that sets you apart, your, your secret sauce, your magic thing, your whatever that is. So that's the, what, that's what you are in your professional realm. And then beneath that, you're going to have how you execute on that.
So it could be, I do this and I do this and I do this. Then we've got your company, which is kind of like your baby right now. And we're talking here just overall about what it is. Why it aligns with you, how it works and what sets it apart, right? Very, very simple. That's one pillar. And then the final pillar, my personal favorite pillar.
Is your why? Why in the world are you here? What are you doing? What's your mission? Your values, your purpose. Why are you in this company? Why are you in this zone of genius? What is it that lights you up? And this is more so about you on the personal side, not the professional side. So your family, your life outside of work, the things that you [00:24:00] love, the people you want to
spend time with, how you spend your time, where you spend your money, those sorts of pieces.
And when you combine all three of those, You have yourself a pretty strong personal brand content strategy right there.
Dustin: absolutely. I love that. and yeah, totally, resonate with all that. so you got your what, or like your zone of genius, the thing you're kind of known for professionally. you got the how, which is like, how do you actually. Provide value through your zone of genius. Maybe that's your company or through different projects or different, even philanthropic endeavors.
And then three, the kind of thing that ties it all together makes people really care about you personally is the why what are your values? Is this something you do because of your. Faith or some way you're serving your community or some way, you know, like what really fires you up and makes you show up every day and do this.
So I love that as like a three pillar framework for what, what kind of content to even do, and then you get as tactical as you'd like, but like, if I start thinking about this [00:25:00] and I've got, I can just sort of like create lists under these three pillars, then what, is it like, is there a certain frequency we should be posting?
Is there like text versus audio versus carousels versus video and all that jazz?
Mickey: I'll give it all. I'll give it all. But this isn't the only piece. So posting content is just one key component of this entire system. So just keep that in mind. It's not the entire thing. This is what we like to call the amplification. Of a really crummy lead generation system. This is how we take, turn everything else better is by posting those personal brand content.
You're going to relate to your audience. You're going to connect with them. They're going to see you as a person, not a sale. And when you do show up in their DMS, they're like, Oh, you're the one who also talks about how hard motherhood is or how, you know, how important it is for me to align with my faith when I'm in my work, whatever that is.
And then they're going to be way more open to having a conversation with you because they know the conversation is going to be good or not. Regardless of the sale. So that's, that's one component. We find two to three days a week is, is
great. and [00:26:00] there's a whole system behind this, but two to three days a week of posting is great.
But again, posting alone, isn't going to do it. Because if you know anything about LinkedIn and these fickle algorithms, they will not show your stuff to everybody regardless. It's all about engagement. And so you need to know who it is you're targeting behind all of this. Who is your ideal client? If you know who that is and you've got a list of key targets on LinkedIn, this whole process works so much better.
So you're posting this content three days a week. anytime someone engages on your content, you're engaging back. You don't have to live on LinkedIn to do this. We usually hire someone to do this for you, so you'll have to do it. But, but that's part one. And the reason why we love this is because once someone starts seeing and engaging on your content, the number of touch points you'll have with this person increases exponentially. So if somebody starts engaging on your content, instead of seeing your post one time in their feed, they'll see it up to 10 times. And their feet to the scroll. So we all know the importance of creating those marketing touch points, right. And building those relationships and touch points. And so that helps this [00:27:00] significantly.
Dustin: just a quick introduction. if people want to like validate that, go on, cause I've spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, that's kind of my only social media channel. So if you go on there and you do like go comment on someone's like two of their most recent posts and then watch your feed for the next 24 hours.
It's just like every 5th post is them again. So this is legit. As far as what Mickey sharing, like once you grab that attention, like it really creates this frequency, which is really important in marketing, right? Like digital marketing. You got to get so much frequency for someone to really Understand and be conscious of you know, like, and trust.
So yeah, please continue. I just want to kind of verify that I see that all the time.
Mickey: and the other benefit of it is you're going to see their stuff in your feed. So you're going to have more opportunities to engage with them, but they're going to see your stuff in their feet now. And if they engage with your stuff, this whole goes out the window. It just, it's. Amplify so much more. Now they're going to continue to see you ongoing.
And LinkedIn is like, well, these people are besties. We're going to show them their stuff all the time. And it's an incredible way to build connections. So
knowing who your target is [00:28:00] posting consistently and then engaging on their content, creating your content. So that it's engagement worthy is really important.
We're not just posting for the sake of posting and showing up. We want them to engage in our content too. So again, we're building relationships and connections and it's not the AI contents. Can I just say, or the AI generated comments? Like let's not do that. It's okay to have canned comments. That's fine.
Everybody does it. Nobody has time to create personalized content or comments all the time. But let's not just summarize what somebody wrote in the comments using AI. Cause we all know, even something as simple as, Hey, great work. Can't wait to see what you do next. So and so is infinitely better than trying to create this thoughtful comment with AI that just summarizes what they said.
It's useless. So let's not do that. So the next step. After we have been engaging with these people for, and I recommend a few weeks. I don't recommend jumping into the DMS immediately after one comment, because then you're going to look needy and it's just [00:29:00] not the best vibes. I sound so Gen Z. It's not, it's not the best vibes on LinkedIn.
So give yourself time to really nurture this relationship and show yourself to them. They're going to see the variety of personal brand content you post, and they're going to get a real sense of who you are and really build a strong connection with you. The next step is moving into the DMS. Now, we can start to send messages and connect with people and request connections genuinely because we saw their content.
They saw ours. We've been engaging. It makes sense. Right? Now, the thing I will say is when we're sending our messages, look at the messages you hate receiving. Don't do that.
Dustin: That's a good rule. Thump.
Mickey: Don't do
that. If you don't
Dustin: to receive this send. Yeah.
Mickey: Right? Like, if you wouldn't want to receive this in your inbox, don't send it. No matter what anyone says, it's just not, it's not okay. We want to build relationships that if a sale happens great, but if a sale doesn't happen, they're not going to hate me and think that I'm cold and just in it for sale.
I genuinely want to build my network. I genuinely want to [00:30:00] meet people and connect with them and see if there's ways I can support them, connect them with someone or potentially have a sale, but it's not just about sale. Those are great. And they happen often when you do this. But you have to see bigger than that.
And so we're sending connection requests that are personalized, that are engagement based. Like, Hey, I love what you're doing in X industry. I saw your post on XYZ and I thought it was fantastic. We need to be friends. I would love to connect and learn more about you. Someone is far more likely to respond or connect to that and continue a conversation than me saying, Hey, I work in X, Y, Z industry, buy my stuff.
Dustin: Yes.
Mickey: So then we can have a really thoughtful and engaging conversation. So what I always preach is lead with value. I don't want to take, I want to give value. And so one of the things we do. In this process to really stand out and make this super effective as we give and we know our customers. Well, there's usually a lead magnet or an article or some sort of a resource that we can say, Hey, I [00:31:00] know you're in this industry and I was talking to so and so I wrote this article for NASDAQ and I thought it would be applicable for you.
I'd love to hear if you liked it or if you found value from it after you've read it. So now we've given without any expectation. That creates really, really good reciprocity. So the person's going to think, Oh wow, this person's giving me stuff and it's not like a sale. It's just an article. I thought I would like look amazing. So now we have a really good reason to follow up if they don't respond immediately.
Hey, just checking in. Did you get a chance to read my article? I'd love to hear your unbiased thoughts. No pressure to be nice. Like if you didn't find it valuable, no problem. And most of the time, I'll respond, say, Oh, you know what? Either. I didn't have the time to check it out, but I will this week. They don't want to make you feel bad or ghosted.
You gave them something for free or, Hey, I loved it. Or, Hey, you know what? It just didn't hit the mark for me. And that's okay because now we can continue the conversation. Thank you for the feedback. It's great to hear that you read it or, you know what? I'm sorry. You didn't get [00:32:00] great value. I'd love to learn more about your perspective.
Would you like to hop on a call to chat and get to know each other more? I'm sure we could have an amazing conversation. And that's how you book calls.
Dustin: As a quick introduction on like the leading with value, you know, the more that it is in alignment with the content you're sharing and kind of what you're known for, you know, the easier and more natural that is. So for me, you know, like the, quote unquote, the podcast guesting guy. So there's a lot of my contents about relationship building, podcasting, podcast, guesting.
I'll highlight an interview I did or whatever. Right. So people when they see me and my headline on LinkedIn starts with profitable podcast guesting, it's very natural for me to be like, Hey, Mickey is so cool to connect. I know you commented recently about, that you were a digital marketer partner or whatever.
I don't, I don't know if you saw, but like I did an interview on digital markers podcast and usually what I'll actually do is say, is it okay if I send you a link to that? So I'm not even sending them the free thing without their permission, because it's like another interaction and that way they're like, Oh, that'd be really cool.
And I send them a link. And now that's linked [00:33:00] for me as a podcast, because it's like my genre and it builds my credibility, it builds my authority. And so I've got a couple of kind of go to podcasts that often send people in DMS, but I usually ask first. It's like, I think this would actually be really useful to you.
I don't want to be like, you know, presumptuous, but if it's cool with you, I'd love to send it. They say, absolutely. And yeah, and it just creates a natural conversation, which to go back to you, Mickey, then leads very naturally into an actual live call with someone. Right. Yeah.
Mickey: Yeah, it's a, it's a really natural process and the way that I like to think of it too. So first I would say like tactical piece of advice if you're like, okay, I'm going to start doing this. I'm going to post two to three days a week. I've got some good topics I want to hammer out. No problem. I'll use chat GPT to come up with ideas.
I know who my target audience is. I'm commenting and engaging consistently, or I have someone who's doing that. I'm going to get into the DMs. Number one piece of advice. Read your messages out loud before you hit sense.
Dustin: That's good.
Mickey: Please, you want it to sound like a real [00:34:00] person. You want it to sound conversational and human.
And we all typically write on the formal side. We write a little bit more than a fifth grade average. And we use spell check and we do all those pieces. And if you want someone to know that you're human, make the occasional error. Laughter. Write like you talk, and if you're not writing like you talk, read out loud, or you can even record yourself talking to somebody and then just transcribe that, but read it out loud because otherwise it is an absolute tell that you're not a real person and everyone is tired of that.
Dustin: I like that a lot.
Mickey: I'm all for the simple,
Dustin: I just say, do you have any other like DM tips real quick? Cause I had one little tidbit to add before we will kind of wrap up.
Mickey: contingencies, contingencies. And so one of the ways we lead the conversation. So we send the connection request amazing from there. We usually ask a question, that engages them into the conversation. So it could be, Hey, I saw you're a business owner. Are you just starting somewhere in the middle?
Are you planning an exit sometime? You know, we'd love to learn more about you. And [00:35:00] we give them two or three easy to pick. Options because that takes them two seconds to be like, this is me and respond. We take the workload off of them and then we'll move into value. So we're just trying to have a natural conversation.
We're, we're getting them to engage and it's not us talking at them. So you tell me about you. And then the contingencies are if they have a positive response or a negative response. So usually we're asking like, how are you finding the market these days? Or, you know, how has it been? Have you seen much return on those podcasts guesting lately?
And then we'll have a response for positive or negative. So you're building out this script in a way that it's not just so canned responses, but it's really a genuine conversation that someone can follow. And if it goes off script and you have someone doing this for you, make sure that they send you the message so you can write the response.
Anytime they're going to go off script, I recommend having you look at it and go through it. You don't want to have someone else making those kind of calls because they're nine times out of ten not going to nail your voice. [00:36:00] But those contingencies help you continue the conversation. And we usually say five touch points is the magic time.
Once you get the fifth touch point, you're ready to ask for a call. If it's before that, it's probably too soon.
Dustin: I mean,
Mickey: doing less, but for us, the magic number is the fifth touch point.
Dustin: I don't know that I've really quantified it, but that totally feels right to me. And you can imagine getting, if you've done this before and you didn't go to like five touch points or you, I was guilty of this. And, you know, I was first launching my very first group. I'm just like, I was the guy, anyone who had commented or I comment on their stuff as a DM, like, Hey, you have a call.
I was like, let's have a call guy. And, you know, They got clients out of that, but it was pretty awkward. And it took a lot of, as an introvert, it took a lot of emotional energy. But I imagine you've had five touch points, you've exchanged value. They already respect you. And they're like, wow, you know, he or she really gave me something cool.
that call becomes way more comfortable and you're a lot further down the awareness spectrum of like, they know what you do, right? That doesn't, it might not necessarily be ready to be sold or, [00:37:00] you know, but. They're not gonna be like shocked whenever you're like, Oh, by the way, as you know, I do this thing.
If you want to know more about that, we can have a separate call. I'd love to love to explore that. and as you were talking, Mickey, I was like, this is I never had this amazing framework that you've put it to. But I was thinking, like, I do a very parallel thing. And so it might be helpful. And I'll give a 20 second summary of how this works.
And for me in my industry, just give people like, Oh, and I see what you mean. As far as like, Going back to the first thing you taught about your zone of genius and your thing that you're known for. So, you know, mine's podcast guesting. So a common thing we'll do is we'll connect with other guests from a certain show.
So if I've been on a show, you may get a LinkedIn comment from me or connection requests that says, Hey Mickey, we're both on Joe's show. Super cool that you were on there too. I would love to connect and now we've got a warm reason to connect. And then for me, a natural conversation starter would be, have you been on many other shows?
That's kind of like your ABC about your business status for your company. yeah, you know, that's the easy thing for me to answer. And I can, and it gives me insight and who they are. And it's like, cool. Well, [00:38:00] given that you've been on 10 shows, I think you might really like this podcast that we did. you know, it's about this topic that usually people, you know, have questions about when they get to this point and their podcasting journey.
Oh, wow. That's really cool. and then, yeah. And then for me, one of the things I do that's maybe a little more genre specific is I like to use audio notes, not at the beginning, but like when you get four, you know, three or four conversations in
for me, I'm a. Audio format, dude, right? And so it's like, Hey, Mickey, I just wanted to like, leave you a quick audio note.
You can only do it for 60 seconds, which can get really annoying. But you can leave a quick audio note and it gives you their your voice. It's you can tell us really me and it's personal. so that'd be kind of a bonus tip, I guess, from my perspective. but. This is awesome. So like content, then we get into DMs after the appropriate amount of engagement for a few weeks.
And then through the DMs and the content, we get to five touch points. Then you got the green light to say, let's have a call and get to know each other better. And then explore services. If that makes sense, that I kind of get a recap. I've taken like
Mickey: Yeah.
Dustin: the notes here. So I got all the notes.
Mickey: [00:39:00] Well, one of the other benefits I will say is a lot of people that I work with are like, I can't do that many calls. Like I'm a CEO of a 500 million company. And I'm also on three boards and X, Y, Z. Like I don't have
time for this. I need to touch point someone else. And now I have the strongest personal brand and I'm the one who's going to have the best opportunity to make these connections, but someone else has got to follow through by the fifth touch point.
Touchpoint. We are able to tag in an SDR or a BDM or the CRO to come in and take over with no friction whatsoever. Hey, you know what? I'd love to get in a call. I'm out of town for the next two weeks, but I'm going to introduce you to our CRO, who's absolutely fantastic. And I think you two will have a fabulous call.
I'm going to hop in if I can, but I can't guarantee it, but I want to make sure that we connect again and then. It's usually there's zero friction in that process. That's where people are afraid. But I need someone else to take the call. Do I build it on their profile? Well, if you have the strongest personal brand should be on your profile, but it doesn't, you can't touch someone else in to take those calls at scale.
Dustin: that's awesome. That's beautiful. That's, It's a home run tip right [00:40:00] there because I think at first when you're scrappy and you're like, I'll take any call I can get like I was, you know, two years ago, but yeah, now I'm to the point I've got, you know, what you want to call them an enrollment advisor or sales close or whatever you want to call them people that take calls because yeah, I can't take all those calls and, and you can do this really well.
And then you get this could be awkward point of like, Oh, they want to call. Well, no, like I don't do that. So how do you make that transition? I think when you built this report, it's way easier to be like that. I would love, to learn more about you and your company and see if maybe we can help. I'm going to tag in.
Yeah, Joe over here on Joe is he's way smarter than me at this stuff and he can, he can have a call with you and you guys can make a ton of progress and like you said, I, I might check in if I can. Otherwise, I would love to hear your thoughts after your call with Joe. And we can continue our conversation here on LinkedIn.
So that's awesome. I
Mickey: We usually do it as a vertical specific person who's taking the call. So that's one of the easiest ways to pass it off as like, you know what? I have somebody who works in your industry. That's their, their thing. And they would
love to chat with [00:41:00] you. Let me touch this person in. So that's an easy way for looking for a reason.
Like I'm too busy. Isn't a great reason to pass someone off. Like we're all busy. so if you can find a specific reason to pass them off, whether it's an industry or a specific topic that they're a master at, that makes it a really seamless transition.
Dustin: I love that part of the part of the rationale I have. So all the people that take any calls for us are alumni of our program. And so, That's kind of a nice, it's actually better. Right. It's like, I could try to, I could talk to you about this, but I'm really kind of detached. I'm like, I'd love to actually connect you with Cassie who has been through, who has, implemented our program and her business, and she actually had, you sound just like her before, you know, like, I would say better than that.
But basically you remind me a lot of this person. This person actually is available. If you'd like to book a call with her. She talked about her personal experience, the things that the roadblocks she ran into, and I bet you can get some great insight from her because she's been on your journey just like last year.
and so yeah, so vertical or experience, I think there's some really. [00:42:00] You know, not only seamless and good for the owner, but actually in service to the person that you're trying to get the call with, it's actually better for them. Like legit, my alumni or whatever can, can talk a lot better about their own personal experience, the things that they overcame by being in, in working with our company than I can, and it just comes across as more genuine because like, you know, they're an alumni, I'm like, I'm the, Dude, who you expect you to sell something, you know, like they're just like enrollment advisors.
So, that's awesome. That's rambling because you got my wheels turning. Like, this is like, really good. I like this major, constraint. I think a lot of the whole people back from even getting to this point and linked in. It's like people create problems before the real problems. And one of the problems people create is like, why I don't want to actually get on calls, but you don't have to, like, we can still use your personal branding and profile to create the call opportunities and have a really seamless handoff.
So, Mickey, we can talk for, I mean, literally we can probably talk for a week about marketing and LinkedIn. we'll have [00:43:00] to, we'll have to call it here. Cause I know you and I both have to get onto the next thing, but, I just
want to, Say thank you for being you. Thank you for all that you've done for me the past couple of years.
I really look forward to continuing on, our relationship and our alumni network and be able to do more things like this in the future. It's really cool to catch up. And here are the amazing things you're doing now in this next chapter. so for people listening, they want to talk to Mickey or they want to know more about concertina and maybe getting this help to scale up their own exit ability.
If that's a word like what's what's the what's the best way people for people to get ahold of you.
Mickey: Yeah. LinkedIn is the best place. So, hey, Mickey Anderson, you can find me on LinkedIn. There's a booking link there to hop on a call with me too. So we can chat anytime we install a LinkedIn lead generation specialist who comes into your company and builds this entire system for you. And they're your employee.
So it's yours, which is kind of the beauty of it. So if you're interested in learning more about concertina and the services we offer, it's concertina. com. But you can find everything on LinkedIn, under my profile,
Dustin: right. Hey, Mickey [00:44:00] Anderson on LinkedIn. that's going to be a great connection. So whether you're like looking for services or not, like she's just a great follow, I just, I saw one of your quirky, funny posts this morning.
Mickey: there's a lot of sarcasm.
Dustin: And I always get a great chuckle out of Mickey's content.
It's very fun and relatable. So you can't go wrong with Mickey Anderson. I say that, you know, several times a week. You can't go wrong with Mickey Anderson. So today we get to say it, as we close out the interview. So Mickey, thank you so much for being here. These are some Ninja LinkedIn tactics and strategies.
And you really opened up my eyes into this whole like exit thought and like the things you can do to prepare for the life after exit and the value of a personal brand inside and outside of the current company that you're building. So, really cool stuff. So thanks again for being here.
Mickey: Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. And, just the biggest fan girl here. I'm so, I'm so pumped for everything you're doing. I'm like,
Dustin: Thank you so much.