All right. On the podcast today, I have Stapho Thienpont who is here to talk LinkedIn with us. Somebody that is not only a consultant about this thing, but he's, he actually acts on his own advice. You can go check them out on LinkedIn and we'll get to that later on. First off, Stapho, how are you doing today?

Ah, I'm doing great. I just came off my own show and you know, I'm just enjoying talking so much on the nice thing like this. Nice to be like here in Europe.

Do you like hearing your own voice?

Not really, but I do enjoy talking.

I'm the same way. Hearing my own voice on on microphone. It's kind of weird, but you get over it cause it's

fun to talk to people.

Yeah. 100%. Awesome.

Well, before we get into the details of LinkedIn, I know you're going to give us a ton of advice on how to grow on LinkedIn, but first and foremost, I want some quick context on you so that the audience knows who they're dealing with here. So first and foremost, just curious about the story of your career so far, where you got started and how you ended up where you are now, as briefly as you can.

As briefly as I can. Okay. So I lived in issue to Jim and Stockholm, even though I'm originally from Belgium, which is the other side of Europe. one day I realized, you know what, by beating up my friends all day, I'm not really providing much value to the world. I figured I have a knack for both language and systems.

And then. What I figured out was that, marketing is right on the edge of that. I started a Facebook group, got to start working with my favorite author, all this kind of stuff. and before I knew it, I got started with LinkedIn cause I wanted to learn a new platform. I somehow got into a super secret group of people that were basically the best to ever do it on LinkedIn.

And I just started picking their brains and I started learning all this kind of LinkedIn stuff. I did it for myself, and then I figured, you know what? this is so helpful for myself to generate leads and also generate awareness and build connections and network. I'm going to do this as a service for other people.

And since then we've been turning our people into LinkedIn thought leaders and generating leads for them. some highlights were when the multibillion dollar multimedia Titans started reaching out to our clients purely based on the content, but also getting some of our call bites on sales calls with Microsoft Lyme and the like.

So, yeah, it's been a, that's my journey so far, I guess.

And you're still going, okay. Yeah, the beginning right.

Definitely, definitely. I don't know if I'm going to limit myself to LinkedIn forever, but I'm definitely still growing strong every day. Awesome.

And if I were to ask you what you think your professional super power is, what would you say.

That's a really good, a really good question. I'm actually a really good networker. I would say, even though I don't spend much time, I'm really good at building relationships fast and somehow I don't know what it is, but it's when I talk to people, they walk away with the idea that I really know what I'm talking about with makes, it makes it easy for me to sell, but also to get buy in when I'm working with people, which ultimately lasts me to get good results.

But the networking of personal impact is for sure the key, I would say. Well

that's, that's good because that's what LinkedIn is all about. So let's dive into that and just start talking about how this group of of listeners that are bootstrappers and micro-influencers can actually grow on LinkedIn. My first question really would be, if you are starting out with zero, you're a micro influencer, you are an entrepreneur that's just starting out.

How can you actually get anybody to take your thought leadership seriously?

Well, first and foremost, you gotta have at least some skill and some area, so you've got to be good at something and have something to say about it. I would say that's pretty important. The second thing that I would say you have to do.

Or what's it's optimal if before you actually start creating the content and and doing all that search stuff to also know who it is that you want to talk to. So your ideal target audience, a good way to figure that out is to interview the best clients you have. So not just any of the clients with the best clients that you have, and figure out how we can find more of those people.

Now, on a tactical level, well, that means it's too. Figure out the type of people that you want. Then going in LinkedIn search or LinkedIn sales navigator, finding those exact individuals, sending them a connection request, and then after they accept to start a conversation with them, LinkedIn voice messages work really well because they're an extra personal touch there.

not really. You know, as I'm sure many people have said on your shows. Building thought leadership on any social media platform. It's about scaling one to one relationships. So building a relationship with one person and then the next, and then the next will ultimately catapult you. So it goes beyond just the amount of one-to-one conversations you can have.

But

that sounds like a lot of effort. Yeah, there's, there's no way to cheat the system. You're saying I had to put in

work. And, well, actually there is. but it depends on, on bootstrapping what kind of a budget you have. One thing that I'll say is if you take, yeah, either sales navigator and use that to find like the ideal people that you want or external lists such as top 10 entrepreneurs in the city.

Top 100 marketers in that city, whatever, and then find those people on LinkedIn. You could actually automate a part of the work with tools such as reconnect or grow fleet or Phantom Buster and send these people automated connection requests and follow up messages. No. The issue with that when you're starting out is that you don't know yet which messages people will respond to and you might just burn like thousands of people that you could have.

But then she builds really good relationships with, so my advice is to start doing it manually, at the very least. And then once you get a good fit between your message and your audience, that's when you can scale it up by either using automation tools or by using virtual assistants. Oh, I have to say, does this obviously against the terms of service.

So it's not something I would officially recommend. Hmm.

Well,

let's, let's start out

at, at the very bottom then, and just talk about briefly what the most effective ways that you've seen to start building an audience.

The most effective way. Is to do this, the things I mentioned, earlier, which is knowing exactly who it is that you want to talk to, and then actually talking to them on all the touch points you have. So touch point on LinkedIn would be the other person's own content. So commenting on their stuff as well as the LinkedIn DMS.

So chatting with these people directly. those are in my. In my estimation, the best, most effective tools. And the reason for that is that the personal contact has the highest amount of impact per individual. So if you can get to a hundred true fans, meaning a hundred people that you actually communicate with on a weekly basis, one-on-one, that will just spill over into a larger audience over time because of the network

effect is, it's an audience on LinkedIn.

In terms of your content, is that as valuable as having a good audience on, say, YouTube or Instagram?

Do you mean if they have a similar size? W I mean it just, just like if, if you're actually,

if you're treating your LinkedIn almost like a channel where you're putting out content to reach an audience. So not necessarily touching on the outreach and sales navigator side of things, but just creating content.

If you're trying to reach that audience as a, as a channel, is LinkedIn as a channel through content, as effective as having like a good YouTube channel or a good Instagram channel.

I would say that the best 100% on who? Your target audiences. So if you're trying to. Get to generation Z or whatever, probably take take is going to be way more.

The talk is going to be way more effective for you. but if you're trying to get, you know, like young professionals, seasoned professionals, executive CEOs, people that usually have a high amount of spending power, and I think LinkedIn is second to none. So it depends 100% on who it is that you're trying to target now, Is, is a hundred. Then the question is, if you have. If, if you have the perfect, if YouTube is the perfect best friend for you, and LinkedIn is a perfect bathroom for somebody else and you have a thousand followers on both, which is going to be bringing me, bringing you the most ROI, and that's going to depend on how good you are at using platform.

One really big benefits is that on LinkedIn, somebody that is connected with you, you have to immediately have an open line of communication. So that means you can immediately message them and advanced the conversation while on YouTube. you don't really expect somebody they're subscribed to to reach out to you directly.

So I think the nature of LinkedIn is that it's built for a two way communi...