Transcript of Million-Dollar LinkedIn Profile in Minutes

Welcome to the I am Charles Schwartz Show. Today, we're cracking the code of LinkedIn mastery with Matt Kretzman, the Wizard behind countless digital transformations. Matt's journey from tragedy to triumph is a testament to the power of authentic connections and strategic online presence. In this episode, Matt unveils the secrets that turned his LinkedIn profile into a client-generating machine. From AI-powered profile optimization to the game-changing pipeline principle, he's about to flip your LinkedIn strategy. You'll discover why your current approach might be leaving money on the table and how a simple mindset shift can turn cold connections into hot business deals. Matt's tactics are practical, proven, and ready for immediate implementation. If you're tired of being a LinkedIn lurker and ready to become a lead generating powerhouse, tune in. Matt's Insights could be the turning point your professional life has been waiting for. The show starts now. Welcome to the I am Charles Schwartz Show, where we don't just discuss success, we show you how to create it. On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics that turn me. Every day entrepreneurs into Unstoppable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives. Whether your goal is to transform your life or hit that elusive seven, eight or nine-figure mark, we've got the blueprint to get you there.

The show starts now.

All right, everybody. Welcome back. I'm excited about today's show because this one talks about tragedy all the way to radical success. So, Matthew, thank you so much for being on the show.

Oh, no, it's my pleasure, Charles. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a meaningful conversation. And for those that are listening, I think we're going to take you on a ride today.

Absolutely. Let's start that ride. You've been through some stuff, and most people have no idea who you are. For those of you who are paying attention or don't know, go get some tissues. There's going to be some stuff here. This hurts a little bit, so let's get into it.

Yeah. Right now, where I'm reporting from is this little town called Buddha, Illinois, which is two hours outside of Chicago. I'd never heard of Buddha until one of my best friends moved here. I just wrapped up visiting my parents and doing a conference over in Toronto and wanted to route through here. But as we get into the backstory, my life has been always about relationships. One of the leaders in my life that I admire, he said, your destiny is defined by your relationships. John Maxwell says, you're the sum average of your five. Who are your five that you're spending most of the time with? As I look back on my life, that's always been the constant. The biggest decision that I've made in my life was because somebody spoke into that or somebody had influence over me, and I know, liked, and trusted them, and there was a lot of respect. Back when I was young, I went on a couple of trips to a few different countries and fell in love with travel. I grew up watching Indiana Jones. I think we were from that era. Yeah, exactly. Man, is that a job? Because I want to be that.

Can I do that? Yeah, exactly. The funny thing, did you know with Indiana Jones, it was originally not going to be him. It was going to be the guy from Magnum PI. It was going to be Tom Selleck, the original person who was cast. But the TV show wouldn't let him out of it. So they had to bring in Harrison Ford. But now I can't imagine anybody other than Harrison Ford doing it. He's so iconic.

He's so iconic. I know. Yeah. And the young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I don't know if you ever watched that. It's so good. It's so good. Travel. Anyway, that's what I grew up watching that stuff. I was like, Man, I just love the adventure, the travel, the pursuit of beating the bad guys and winning. When I took trips overseas and throughout Latin America as a young kid, my first trip to Mexico was 2001. My first trip to the Dominican Republic was 2003. Coming from Canada and Toronto, growing up in suburbia, it just blew me away. I was like, How are people living in these conditions? How is this? This is what is actually what most of the world, I think, is actually experiencing as life. From a young age, I was like, Man, I really want to do something to help these people and just make an impact on their lives and improve their situation. Very young, that was inside of my heart, and that was my focus and my goal. Later on, just to accelerate the story, I ended up getting married in I had my first kid in 2008. I was 21 when I got married, and I was a week to 22 when I had my first child.

Her name was Aslyn. She was born eight days after I turned 22, and she made me a dad. It was super special. I love being a dad. I ended up having three girls, so I have no clue what it's like to raise boys. Maybe a little bit because I am one, but from this perspective, I'm a girl dad through and through. I had Aslyn in 2008. At the time, I was working as a used car salesman, though I was not that used car salesman. I was an honest used car salesman.

That's right. It might be an oxymoron. That might be.

It might be. I'm trying to be upstream, man. Maybe not so much. I'm trying to change the trend. It sounds like a campaign. Honest used car salesman. There you go. I was doing that, and then it came the time where I was like, All right, I'm ready to do this thing. I'm just going to launch out. I started a nonprofit organization in January 2010, quit my job, packed up everything, put a bunch of stuff in storage. This was in Southern Ontario. I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go and live in Latin America. I ended up setting my sites on Dominican Republic. Being a Canadian, it was pretty easy for me to get into Cuba, whereas Americans, it's a little bit harder. We can't do it. Complicated.

Yeah, exactly.

Side note, there's actually 11 provisions that allow Americans to travel to Cuba. Yes, we'll save that for the bonus episode. Bonus episode. As I was traveling, just presenting my mission to people all over the US. I went traveling to 45 different states, and I've all over the place, and people love my vision. We get it. We're behind you. We're going to support you. Everything was going great. It was super special. October 20th, 2010, Maddie was born. The height of my travel, which was 2010 to 2013, I had a two-year-old and a newborn. It was tough. We grinded. I could tell you many, many stories. Again, bonus episode of driving all night, pulling over at pit stops and falling asleep in the same bathroom stall that I had just driven three months prior because I was so exhausted. That's real talk. But when you're starting an early stage, even company or organization, that's what you got to do. You got to put in the grind and you got to put in the work. For me, I was very mission-driven and focused. I really wanted to make a difference. It kept me going up until one event that just radically changed my life.

I still feel the ripple effect of what that was, even to this day. To set the stage, Maddie and Aslin. Aslin was three. Maddie was 18 months. We had pulled over in North Carolina. We We're traveling to Ohio for a conference. As I was driving through Northern North Carolina, Mount Airy, other side note, fun fact, Andy Griffith Show was filmed in Mount Airy, North Carolina. That's really old, I know. I'm not not even that old, but I know that stuff.

It's good to know these things. There you go. You're driving through.

I was driving through, yeah, North Carolina. Being a Canadian, this was February in North Carolina, and I wasn't that concerned about the snow because I grew up in the snow. But what I learned that day and since is not every state or place has the same infrastructure to deal with inclement weather such as snow as Canada does. As I was driving north with my family, we were driving along, and I'd see a car in the ditch here and a truck in the ditch over there, and I was driving the speed limit, being very careful. Aslin, she was falling asleep, and so was Maddie. We came to a bridge just before Mount Airy. As we drove over that bridge, our tires actually hit black ice. I didn't see it. They stopped. They just lost traction. The back of the van started to swing out. Kids were asleep. Thank God. I remember my wife at the time just woke up just screaming as we were just careening out of control. What ended up happening was the van spun off in the middle between the north and south highways. There was this large green space, and in the green space, there was this big interstate pole, and our van came to a collision halt right on Aslin's door on that interstate pole.

A bunch of smoke, glass shattered. I was a little bit disoriented. The airbag punched me in the face, and it fractured my nose a little bit. It was a scene out of a horror movie. It was unreal. I ended up I drive with my shoes off, so I wasn't even wearing my shoes. My phone went flying. I jumped out of the driver's side window and came around to the other side of the van. That's where I looked. I mean, that side of the vehicle was just a complete disaster. It was a wreck. It blasted the door. Aslin was there, slumped over. Imagine being a dad. At that moment, I'm like, I don't know what I do. Do I pick her up? Do I not? Where's my phone? I can't call 911. I was just frozen How is it? I remember just shouting out, God, don't take my child. I was like, just don't take my child. I remember scooping her up and holding her, and her body heaped a little bit. I was like, Oh, thank God she's alive. What ended up happening later on was I found out that that was actually her body just expelling all of the air that was in her lungs.

I held on to her to the last minute. There's a lot that I could tell about that story. That's not for this podcast, maybe a bonus episode. But there were so many miracles that happened after that event that just brought so much healing and meaning, I would say, to what was a tragedy. As it obviously ended up passing away, the community wrapped their arms around us and just blessed us immensely. People donated burial plots. They covered the funeral cost. It was actually livestreamed on the local news, WXII, NBC Affiliate. So many people will tune into the livestream, Charles, that it actually it froze and shut down. It just caught the local news. It just went around. Now, because of the nature of my organization, all of our supporters, which there were hundreds, if not thousands of them. They were all tuning in. One tweet that I sent out was really what set it into motion. That was the one domino. I remember laying in the back of the ambulance and I had my phone in my left hand, and I sent out a tweet. I was like, We were in an accident. Don't know if Aslin is going to make it.

Please pray #retweet. That got retweeted a number of times, and that's what set the domino in motion. Of just all these people around the world just loving on us and helping us and supporting us. Now, we carried on, and I think one of the main themes of this talk we're going to have is relationships. One of the relationships that came into my life was somebody who... He was a pastor of a church in North Carolina, and he had been helping people in India for 30 years. He had a great organization doing great work in India. He invited me to come to India, and I'm like, Indiana Jones style, Yo, let's go. You know what I'm saying? I went to India. Again, I I traveled a little bit, but when I went to India, that's when another shock, I was not prepared for what I was about to witness. I didn't know. There are 35 million orphans in India, and the condition that they live in is, I mean, it's horrific. It's unbelievable. It's horrific. I went, one of the guys that I met, he was the one that was in charge of managing our itinerary and driving us around.

His name was Danny. We went on that trip to India. We became friends just because we were side by side, that whole 12-day trip. At the end of the trip, he kept bugging me throughout the trip. He said, Hey, let me know when you have a few minutes because I want to come and show you something that I'm working on. We were just so busy. But at the end of the week, I had a window and I was like, Cool, let's do it. I jumped on a scooter, drove over to this place, maybe a mile down the road, and I pulled up to this tiny building, this tiny house that was clearly under construction. What he ended up telling me was he and his wife took out a loan from the government because they were so burdened about caring for the orphans of India that they were willing to take out a personal loan to build a building, build a small house, and care for as many as they possibly could. He just shared his vision with me, and I took a picture, a few pictures that day. I still have it. I reflect back on it.

But what ended up happening eight months later is we continued to have a friendship and build a relationship and a level of trust. He called me one day and he said, Matt, I'd like to ask you a question. I'd love to team up with you to build this orphanage. I'd just like to know, would you mind if I named it after your daughter? I was like, tears just stream and like, I would love to, man. It was a dream someday, a bucket list. If one day I could have an impact like that and just do something so incredibly meaningful. It came much sooner than I thought it would. At the time, I was probably 26, 27 years old. I had young kids. I had Lucy in 2013, and so I had two young girls. To find such meaningful fulfillment through something like that, it has become one of the greatest honors of my life to help these kids. The interesting thing I'll say about where I'm reporting this from right now, I'm actually in a city where another one of my closest, dearest friends that walked through all these seasons of life with me, he lives here in Buda, Illinois.

I'm here hanging out with my friend, Chanta, who's just been such an amazing anchor for me throughout my life. To speed up the story, I ended up moving to the Dominican Republic in 2013 to '16. My heart grew for India so much more. I was like, I need a better home base. I can't base out of the Dominican if I'm going halfway around the world with my family. Essentially, I spun the globe and I'm like, Where should I live? Dallas looks great. I settled on Dallas, moved to Dallas with the intention of continuing to serve and love and help grow our organization in Asia, really in India. That's when real life hit and the van that was spinning in 2012 felt like it continued to spin. In 2016, when I moved to Dallas and I had my two kids, that's when my wife left. I was now full-time single dad. I had lost almost everything except my kids. I lost my organization because I couldn't travel anymore as a single dad. I lost my sense of identity because I had done that my whole life. The cost with which it came, I I felt a great sense of grieving over all the blood, sweat, and tears in the life that it cost for me to build what I had built.

That was then taken away. My self-respect was taken away. I was used to being flown over to conferences and speaking in front of hundreds of if not a couple of thousand people. I had really settled on where I am in life, and I'm very happy and I'm content. I'm excited about my future, only to have all of that taken away. In 2016 to '18, those are what I call my wilderness experience, where I was just wondering and I was searching for what's the next thing? I don't know. I would assume that there's no doubt somebody who's listening to this podcast that is either going through that experience, they've come out of that experience, or they're about to go into a period of time like that, a season. Life comes in seasons, and there's going to be a season like that where the unexpected happens, and it may be very difficult.

You've gone through all these things, which most people will never experience in their lives. They've never experienced loss on that level, where life happens and then a community rallys behind you, and then you build these relationships, and then even after all this healing, life just continues to happen. There's a 67% failure ratio of all marriages in the United States. It is what it is. It's a better change. I wouldn't get on a plane that had a 67% failure ratio, hence why there's no ring there. In that, you started thinking about, Hey, relationships matter and how we can leverage relationships. And there's different platforms and there's different ways to do it. I know you've written a book about that on how to jump into relationships and how to influence and connect in those relationships. When you're doing that and you're going into that, what have you learned? Tell me more about your book on how you can leverage this because I get everyone has things that their tragedy, whatever is going on, is the worst that ever happened. For them, it is. It's like when you've got little girls, when they first start crying that first time because they hit their hand or they touch something warm, that's the worst pain they've ever felt in their lives.

Yeah, there's other people who have inoperable bone cancer who are going through much more, but to That individual child, it's the worst they've ever come across. Everyone's pain they're going through is the worst they've ever gone through. But when you have the ability to look at other people saying, Hey, you lost a daughter, you lost a wife, you lost everything, all of these things, and yet you're still done this, Okay, how do I get out of that hole? How do I get back up and running? You've always said it, relationships are core of that and how to access this and leverage this and make sure that you present yourself in a way that you are engaged with. Tell me more about that and the platform you use and the book and all I love this.

I love this. Then thank you for the segue. This is this is perfect. So 2019 was another year that changed my life, and for the better. That was the pivotal moment where in that year, I figured out a couple of things, and it set me on a different trajectory. I will say the mindset that I had all through those years, though there were certainly highs and lows and ups and downs, and I felt good one day and horrible the next day as I was just on this constant pursuit for what's next, 2019, I met somebody who became a mentor to me. I always tell for people that are going through a tough season or they're looking for a transition, who are the people that are where you want to be? Who's gone through what you've gone through? They've come out successful and they are at a level of life that you want to experience. Reach out to them and ask them for help. Maybe there are some that will accept that and be open to that and some that might reject that. Fortunately for me, it came through an intro. A friend saw where I was at.

He's like, Hey, you seem to have some marketing skills. You've done a number of marketing things. Let me connect you to Brad, who runs a marketing company, and see if he's got a spot. I met Brad, talked to Brad. He offered me a spot, hired me. In 2019, I figured out everything that had to do with starting a marketing agency and running a business. These are the skills. This is what I love about where we're at in society. We live in the gig economy. We're in a skill economy. Where I went to school meant nothing. It had no bearing on my success in business and into the next stage that I was going to step into. It was 2019, all about learning skills. For me, and there's a lot of skills that you can learn, there's skills than ever that you can learn.

What are some of those skills that you learned that you got to leverage into? Because a lot of people are going to want to have some really practical, tangible, what do I do? How do I get out of this? I get finding a mentor. What are the skills that we get in? How did we get to that point?

For me, the skills that I learned, LinkedIn became, for whatever reason, I had a draw to LinkedIn, a pull to get into LinkedIn, so I jumped in on LinkedIn. My perception of LinkedIn was a place that I would spruce up my profile if I needed a job. It was essentially a digital replica of my resume. What I didn't know but soon discovered was, LinkedIn is, in my opinion, one of the biggest gateways to unbelievable opportunities, more so than any other social media platform, in my experience, and for a number of different reasons. Because on LinkedIn, it is, yes, now it's become a content hungry platform. 0.5% of the total user base on LinkedIn consistently create content, and they're approaching a billion users. That's a lot of empty space. Linkedin wants people to fill that empty space. But the second thing and why I love LinkedIn the most, at least initially, was it's a platform to connect with people. It is a business-first platform where people are expecting and get on there to do business. And that business is done through relationships, and it's also done... Those relationships are formed by having the right conversations. What I learned was, and to get to your question about what skills, my skill set that I developed was I became really good at finding Finding the right people and starting the right conversation with the right person in the right way.

We're talking about total strangers. That's really the question. I think through this all the time with my clients. How do you find the right person and start that conversation at scale that doesn't make them feel like they're being spammed or they're a sales target or they're just a number?

I think that's why only 0.5% or whatever it is in LinkedIn actually creates content and pushes it out because they don't know how to do that. If I'm in a situation, and one of the things we love going is getting really tactical. If I'm sitting there and going, Listen, I thought LinkedIn was just my resume in a different format, which is what most people think that LinkedIn is. How do I present myself so that it is in a way that is going to get that engagement, that is going to build that relationship? What are some of the things that people can do that are tangible, that they can sit down and say, Oh, crap. I just heard Matt. This is awesome. I'm going to pull over. I'm going to do this on my phone. I'm going to do this right now on my laptop. I'm going to stop listening to the podcast. I'm going to write down and I'm going to take immediate action. What are some of the things that they can do immediately?

Here's a step, and I just did this. Here's a process, very tactical. I just did this with my dad two days ago. It took us about two hours. You're probably going to need to be on your laptop to do this because I don't think LinkedIn lets you do it from your phone. But listen to this later and follow the process. Step one, go to your LinkedIn profile and you can download your profile as a PDF. Download your whole profile as a PDF. Step number two, sign up for a claud. Ai account. It's free. If you pay the $20 a month subscription, you're going to get access to claud projects, which I'm a big fan of. Go and do it. It's 20 bucks. It's totally worth it. Okay, that's step number two. Step number three, you're going to go and upload that PDF onto claud, right? And then you're going to tell claud, you're going to tell claud this, because the first thing that's really important for you is your profile. Your profile is... It's your digital billboard. You got to have a dialed-in profile. You're like, Oh, I'm not a good writer. I can't think about how do I position myself as an expert.

You don't have to do that anymore.

That's gone. Exactly. 100%.

Exactly. Take all this stuff, go Claude, give it your PDF, and tell Claude, just like you were talking to a human, Hey, Claude, my name is so and so. I've given you a PDF of my LinkedIn profile. I want you to help position me as an expert. Look at my experience, and here are some things that I'm passionate about. Let's work sequentially through my profile so that I can produce something that's highly optimized and professional. Enter. Boom. Claude is going to analyze all of it. It's going to do all the hard work, and it's going to spit out this amazing copy for your headline, your About section, your experience, maybe even your banner, and just work through, go back and forth. Hey, Claude, I like this, but I don't like that. Tweet this, fix that, whatever. Just like you were talking to an editor or a graphic designer, and it'll do all the work. Then you can go to Canva. Canva, of It's like, update the banner and stuff like that, clean up your profile, and you'll be amazed. You'll be amazed what happens when you just do that one thing, you'll feel better, and that will give you the confidence, which I think is the reason why most people shy away from being really active on LinkedIn is because they're either insecure or they don't feel like they present themselves in the right way, and they don't have any clarity on what's my authority, what's my expertise.

I love that you started with that, because I've had this conversation with people all the time. They're like, Okay, what do I say to someone? I was like, Listen, if I told you the absolute perfect thing to say in a networking environment, and you walked in naked, covered in dirt with your hair messed up, having bedhead, I don't care what you say. It's probably not going to convert. I love that you said, We got to start with your profile. We got to clean you up because if you're walking into a room, this is digital You've got to present yourself in a way that integrates and connect in a really high way. Using cloud AI, and there's a lot of people who are nervous about AI. I'm not nervous about AI in any way you should perform. I think it's the greatest tool on the planet is a virtual fleet of employees for me. I use it all the time. I absolutely love it. Do I think it's going to take over a bunch of different stuff? I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know. All I know is that for a lot of companies that I've worked with, like content creators and all that, I'm like, You all guys might want to get more skill sets because it's going to Things are going to change.

Ghost riders got eaten alive. Eaten alive.

Yeah, almost.

100%. It's over. It's over. Sorry, guy. If you're a ghost rider right now, contact Matt. He'll teach you some new skill sets. That's great. You're going to need him. He's just what it is. Sorry. It's like the people used to be the window knockers back in England. They would knock on your windows in the morning to wake you up, and then alarm clock's happening. You're like, Well, sorry. It is what it is.

Sorry.

It is what it is. Okay, so someone goes in, they use Claude, they've redesigned this. A lot That's the stuff that people run into. That is a problem is, how do I connect? I mean, we connected over LinkedIn. How do I connect? How do I reach out? How do I do this? Obviously, the best way is just to send naked pictures. No, that's not right.

No, that's Instagram.

That's OnlyFans or something. But I also love what you said that LinkedIn is specifically designed. They're there for a specific reason. You go to an event that's all about knitting, you don't go and talk about how to make sushi. It's a knitting event, for God's sakes. Same thing here. They're here to do this. There's so many people who try and do business on Instagram, and I'm like, It's a little harder, guys. Go to the path of least resistance. If you're sitting there and you've gone through cloud and you've optimized your profile, how important is social proof? I know you've written a book. I've written them as well. How important is social proof now?

The time-old formula, and it's never going to change, is no like and trust. You got to put yourself in the other person's shoes and look at you from an objective perspective. If I see me on LinkedIn or in town? Do I exude trust? Is there any evidence of my expertise? That's essentially it. I love these philosophies or approach to life that's like, build in public. Show your homework. There's never more an important time for you to show your homework and work in public, build in public, than now. It is the proof of your work. That's super important. There's a couple of easy ways to do that, one of which you can do through content. Let me give you, again, really low hanging fruit, easy takeaway, super tactical. Again, I did I was with my dad two days ago, and I do this all the time. So this works, all right? So now that you've gone to Claude and you've cleaned up your profile, the next thing that you can do with Claude, and here's how I juggle Claude with ChatGPT, I would then go to Claude and say, based on all this information, what would you say are some topics that I should be talking about to build the right audience?

Boom, it'll give you topics. If you want to take it a step further and build the roadmap to LinkedIn Voice, which I've done, go to Google, LinkedIn Voice, top LinkedIn Voice topics. You'll Come up with the website, grab the website, give it to ChatGPT, and say... Actually, I would compare both with ChatGPT. Copy all that, get the PDF, give it to ChatGPT with that link, and say, I want you to blend my expertise with LinkedIn top voice topics, and Tell me what I should be speaking about on LinkedIn. Boom, it's going to make sense of all of it, make it super easy. If you want to take it a step further with ChatGPT, which is great for research and strategy, then tell ChatGPT, Hey, what are some newly published books on these topics and authors that I can use to create content or possibly reach out to? Here's the magic. Now it gives you all those books, the authors. It'll even link to them. You can click those. If you're really smart, you're going to find those authors on the sleepiest channel to connect with high performance ever, and that's LinkedIn. You see where I'm going with that.

I've done this multiple times. Yes. And it works. Exactly. Not only does it work, it's a game changer. I remember there was an individual that we wanted to come out for an event, and I reached out to him and said, Hey, I'm going to buy 500 copies of your books and give them away. Do you want to come speak at this event? And he's like, I'm sorry, what? And I was like, I'm going to give them away for free. It would be great if you were there, if you want to sign them, if you want to do a remote thing. He's like, I'll come out and I'll speak. And he's like, Okay. And all it cost me, instead of having to pay him to come speak, I just bought 500 copies of his book. And we got the author's price, which is very... For those who haven't published a book, we, authors, get a very different price than you do. So my book is the cheapest I can make it, which is 14 bucks, 15 bucks. My author's copy cost me $4 dollars free shipping. Whenever I go speak at events, I will literally ship boxes of my books to the event and just give them away.

Because if you're in the process of writing a book on a complete little tactical tip, books are nothing more than a sales funnel. They're your social proof to create your sales funnel. It's building KLT, which Matt talked about earlier, which is no like and trust, but it has to be written in a way which is feel, felt, fix. I feel what you've gone through. I have felt it, too. This is how I fixed it. That's how all your content needs to be done. If you're not doing these things, it's brutal. One of the things that you mentioned also that I think it's just I love it. I think we need to bring back the age of authenticity, the ability to sit there and say, Hey, I'm doing this live. For example, I sat there and we were doing an event. I'm like, I'm the Beyoncé podcast. They're like, I'm sorry, what? I was like, The Beyoncé podcast back in when she was on Star Search and she got kicked off because she had no idea what she was doing. I'm going to say a podcast. I have no idea what I'm doing. But it hooked enough that people were like, Oh.

I was self-deprecating enough, to be honest. I don't know. I was doing it on a webcam. You and I talked before we started recording. I was like, I don't know Matt. You're like, Really? You're going to love it. I was like, I don't understand how to do anything. Having that authenticity is a huge factor. It's huge. When you do this outreach, what are the ways? Do you have templates? Do you have normal ways that you do it? Say, Hey, this is how I'm going to outreach. How do you do it?

Depending on the It's not going to be the campaign. And the campaign strategy, I tell people tools. Tools and data, both of them are a commodity nowadays. Use whatever tool you want. They're all going to do a good job. If you want to use our tool, Leadstorm AI, go for it. But there's a ton of them. They all do a good job. Data is everywhere. Don't buy a list from people. Just go get a $99 subscription offer.Thank you.Go to Warp Leads. It's 49 bucks, and you can export unlimited contacts at Warp Leads. Okay, there you go. That was free. So that doesn't really matter. It's your strategy. And what we do when We're talking about outreach is, I do, at least, and you probably do, too. We look for commonality. What's the commonality between me and them? This is what I teach called... This is like my pipeline principle, which most people, they think about pipeline and they hear sales. When I think about pipeline, I hear relationships. Yes. How do I build my brain?

I think everyone listening to this needs to stop thinking sales and start thinking relationships. Correct. Your network is your net worth, and the better relationship you have with them, it changes it. I love that you have that definition.

That's it. I even I'm going to say, you know what? A little bit of a tangent. I don't say your net... I'm going to redefine that one. I don't think your network is your networth. Your network is your conduit to expose your networth. Because my networth doesn't come from people around me. My networth is intrinsic to who I am, but my network is necessary for me to express and exchange that value. You know what I'm saying? It's a way for you to spend those dollars and do business in the economy. But no, you're right. And your networth does increase with the quality of relationships, which is really important. So you look for commonality. And some easy ways to do that. There's a couple of different hacks that I've used over the years, and they continue to work well. Alumni campaigns are easy. Did you graduate from a certain university? We did one for a president of a Basketball Team He graduated from Notre Dame, lives in Dallas. Notre Dame peeps in Dallas, Hey, I'm holding a luncheon. I'd love for you to come. Super easy. That one works, commonality. The other one could be beliefs or values.

Go to maybe organizations they may be a part of, where you might view the world the same way or care about the same topics. Do you volunteer a part of an organization? The other one that works really well is LinkedIn event hacking. So go into LinkedIn in the search bar, put yourselves in the mind of your ideal client. What What events would they attend? Put that in the search in LinkedIn, filter by events. You can do it from your phone, and then you're going to scroll through all the events. If you put sales, they care about sales, they have problems with sales, you're good at sales, boom, there you go. Now there's thousands of people that are looking for what you're trying to offer, and they care about leveling up. Those are little strategies that I'll use. Then as far as templates, depending on... Okay, go ahead.

That's where I was going. I was like, I get how you find the people. It's not like, okay, I find someone who wants to do personal growth, wants to do sales, wants to do whatever, how How do I do outreach? Because it's interesting because some of the people I work with are like, Well, how do I find people that are like-minded that I want to date? I was like, It's not that hard. Where do you want to hang out? It's the same idea. It's the same commonality. Where are they going? And then go to those events and you're going to find like-minded people. Apps, not a good idea because you're just pissing in the wind. When you do this and you're like, Hey, I found Bob, Susie, whoever it is that I want to connect with, what does the outreach look like? What does the temp look like? How do you communicate in a way that's effective?

If I'm going to do the event hacking one, for instance, I like to open up my connection message, which, by the way, if you put no connection message in your connection request, about 30% are going to convert anyways. If you have a really clean profile, so have a really clean profile, reach out, you'll get that connection, you'll get that success, especially if your profile speaks to what they care about, and they're like, Oh, it's super obvious. But if you're going to put a connection message into your request, I like to open up with a question or with a relational value statement. For events, I usually start with you attending event name to first name, question mark. Really cool bumping into somebody else who cares about growing, leveling up in sales or leveling up in whatever. Because that question, psychologically, the human wants to answer the question. We've seen that one work really well. You might even say it's a little bit cheesy, but it still works. If you're reaching out to people that do fit the ICP, ideal customer profile, you're still working at company name, first name, question mark, right? Just to clarify, because not everybody updates their LinkedIn profile.

They may have moved on and you don't know about it, so they're not a fit anymore. So that clarifying statement, we've seen crazy good metrics just with that one question in the connection request. Sometimes even 80% will accept the connection request, and maybe 40% will just directly reply without even accepting the connection request with things like, Yes, I am. Why do you ask? No, I'm not, or whatever. It just starts the conversation. It's just a conversation starter. That's the easy way. I don't I don't think there's any substitute for the manual, highly, highly personalized, I'm going to do it myself. I don't think there is a substitute for that. The next best thing is a bunch of sophisticated tools like clay. Com and hyper personalization, as we would call it, as the intro message. Subsequent messages, I'm big on video. Put a video in that second message. Get it up as early as you can, get people to see you and build rapport through video, the better your campaign is going to perform.

Because I'm curious, when you do that, there's this weird thing called KLT that seems to come into play when you send a video. It's weird. It's wild. It's wild.

Crazy.

One of the things that... Even on Instagram, because there's different things on different platforms, whenever I try to do outreach to someone, if it's on Instagram, I'll send a voice message. I'll never type it all day long because voice messages get opened on an exceptionally higher rate. And also, I hate typing. I can barely spell my own name. So it's just easy for me to go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah on such a higher level. You're not going to get it all the time, which is okay, but they convert on... At least their team is going to get it.

That's correct. Same thing on LinkedIn. I do the same thing. A great little hack. Shout out to my friend Morgan Ingram. He's got 160,000 followers now on LinkedIn. He's crushing it. I've learned a ton from him over the years. Here's the one hack that he's always been teaching, and I learned from him. Voice message on LinkedIn, followed by this sentence, Any thoughts on my message above? Push them back to the audio message. Get them to listen to it. That's really it. Same thing with video. Thoughts on my video, Bustermark, leave it ambiguous so that it forces them to listen to it. It's a great little hack.

That's beautiful. Very tactical. They're going through and we all know the basics of the profile. I can have a picture, look at the camera, so on and so forth, some basics up there, which I don't do. I don't think I've logged into my LinkedIn. My team does for me, so we'll have a different conversation about that.

That's a lot of trust right there.

It's That's not my focus at the moment. But as they're going through this, and, okay, I've got this relationship going. My profile is updated. Are we sending out lead magnets? Do lead magnets work? Do you want to have booklets there? Do you want to send to a website? How long do you want to keep them on platform? Those are things.

Beautiful. Here's What do we think about lead magnets. Put a lead magnet. Again, not everybody knows this, but your LinkedIn profile, you can add additional features on your profile. If you're looking at it, there's a button that says Add Section. Click Add Section, and then there's another section that says Recommend it. Click that one. Then it's going to go Featured section is one recommended, which is another. Your banner and then the Featured section are the two biggest parts of your profile. But lead magnets in the Featured section. Whatever your top of funnel thing is, put it right there, make it easy, enticing, design it so it's really Nice. Get people to click it. The second place that you can put lead magnets, I think it's right below your headline, you can actually put a custom URL. That's an additional feature. Go into the settings, add a custom URL, and you can actually change words, and then there's a hyperlink behind the words. I would say something like, grab your free whatever here.

That's the next question. What is the free whatever? Because people are going to like, do I want a video? Do they want a course? Do they want a checklist? What is the free whatever that converts the highest?

Great. The third place where you're going to do lead magnets is in your content. To answer your question, good segue, lead magnets work unbelievably well in content. Here are some very simple ones that you can do. Listicles work really well. Come up with a list of whatever thought, Hey, top 10, whatever here. Best templates for this. Most successful that. Listicles are great. Case studies are great. Depending on what industry you're in, for instance, AI or automation. Ai, it's like, Oh, my gosh, I don't even know where to start. Clarify for people by putting together a case study. Here's what I did to use this to help this company overcome this and achieve that. Put that case study in there. The other thing that you can do is you could do... Carousels work really good. Of course, walkthroughs. If what you're doing involves software or tech, put a walkthrough together. Here's how I use these tools to accomplish this. That's clarifying. If you wanted to do a mini course, I see people launch these all the time on LinkedIn, and they're great. Whatever extremely valuable, time-intensive thing that you can create and give away and put a call to action at the bottom of it and say, If this helped you or will help somebody in your network, please share.

You will get people because they feel good. They're now the dealer. They're just dealing out good resources to their network.

Because a lot of them are being a little a tad bit lazy in creating their own content and their own lead magnets, and they're just going to appropriate your stuff, which is absolutely fine. Don't mind at all. So these are some of the things that work really, really well. What are some of the things that people make mistakes that are like, Oh, God, if I don't do these five things, just please, for the love of everything, don't do these five things. It'll convert better. Because I know that you only have so much time with you. What are the five things that are like, Oh, I wish they would do this?

Things that they shouldn't do? Correct.

I see this all the time. These are common mistakes.

Listen, what are the five things. I mean, look, the big number one, the big number one, please just don't spam people. Just don't. If you think quantity is better than quality, you are dead wrong. So just don't. If you think LinkedIn is a numbers game to an extent, but it shouldn't be. It's different. You want to come with a sniper, you don't want to come with an Uzi. So just don't get that automation tool. It's cheap and easy and whatever. I don't really care. Don't. You're going to burn more bridges than you're going to build. So just number one, don't do that. The second thing that I would say is, man, don't be a lurker. Don't be a lurker. I think a lot of people I see, they're of getting on camera or just putting themselves out there. And don't. Just overcome that fear. And you'd be amazed at how many people will just rally behind you.

Yeah, I think it goes to a point that you said earlier when you found, I believe it was Danny, who was a mentor who came up and connected with you, find a map, find the people out there that already done it who can say, Listen, I know you're scared. I've been there before. I know where the rocks are. I know how to walk across this. It doesn't take a lot of energy. You sit down and you have that conversation, get the buildup of it, because Because there's so many, as you said, what, 0.5% of the people are actually doing anything on LinkedIn?

Yes.

This is basically like going back to Instagram a decade ago. This opportunity of a lifetime is only going to matter in the lifetime of this opportunity. It's not going to be around much longer, especially as we walk into a massive recession, which is going to be brutal. Everyone's going to start optimizing their world in LinkedIn, and they're trying to get this, and they're trying to fix this exceptionally fast.

Yeah. There are two other things that I'm going to add to that, just to jump in. Two other things. Linkedin If you pull up the app, the app on LinkedIn, if you look at the bottom, and this is an SEO strategy, too. We've used this for years. If you want to figure out what does this platform, whether it's Google or LinkedIn, want me to contribute, go into the platform and maybe put a little search term on Google, and it'll show you images, videos, maps, articles, whatever order that is. That's what it wants, Google wants, in order for you to rank. On LinkedIn, it's the same thing. Open the app, look at the bottom. Home, Video, Network, notifications, and then profile. So LinkedIn is making very obvious, we want you to create videos, and now you have TikTok style videos on LinkedIn with that feed. So it's definitely video hungry. The second thing that I'll say that it's highly tactical, and I do see this all the time, and I wish people would stop, not because it's a bad thing, but it's not the smartest thing, is if you're going to post an article or a long form post on LinkedIn, but especially an article, do it under a newsletter.

Because a newsletter is very easy on LinkedIn for you to build subscribership. Brand your newsletter towards your audience, publish the articles under the newsletter, and here's the cool thing. There's lots of benefits. I could talk a lot about newsletters on LinkedIn. But number one, you can embed long-form videos off LinkedIn's platform in an article on a newsletter, and LinkedIn won't slap you for it. If I wanted to embed a YouTube video in an article, I could do that in an article. You can't do that on a post. They'll penalize you for it. The second thing is subscribers to your newsletter, they get a push notification on their phone whenever you publish an article. Nice. Dude, do you know how valuable that is to creep up on someone?

That's all you pop up on someone? Huge. There's so many these little secrets and these little hacks. I know you've written a I'll talk about it. But there's so many these little things that we could probably talk for five or six days just on this. And there's a reason you coach people new to this. If someone's listening to this and all of a sudden they're like, holy crap, I didn't even know that you could even do a newsletter. I didn't even know about Claude, and I know about all these things. How do people track you down? How do people get a hold of you and say, Listen, this was great. I understand how much I don't know now. I need to book some time with you. I need to figure this out. I need to get access to you. How do people track you down? How do they find you?

I love it. The obvious would be LinkedIn. Surprise. It's a surprise. Number two, the book, the LinkedIn Advantage. We didn't get to talk about it as much as I would like, but I would say the book is incredibly special. It's with a co-author of mine who's written 100 books and found him through LinkedIn. My life has changed because of LinkedIn, and I get to write an amazing book with a guy like Tony Jury. But yes, that next step, if they wanted to reach out and get started, go to thelinkedinadvantagebook. Com, and that's a good place for you to get started. You can look up information about the book. But the best thing there is the assessment. I developed, it's called the LinkedIn Power Score. It's free. Go to the website, take the score, see where you're at, and then you can figure how you can improve.

Love it. They reach out on LinkedIn directly to you. It was your Instagram or emails or anything like that you want to have them track down to, or is that always the best bet?

Yeah, Snapchat. My only... No, I'm just kidding.

Shopping his house, give them on. Man, I appreciate. There are so many things you gave in this that people are like, Okay, I got it. I knew how much I didn't know. I got a couple of things to get me going. There are things that I need to change on my LinkedIn as well. Man, I really appreciate you coming on.

No, Charles, it's a pleasure. Thank Thank you so much. Yeah, reach out. Happy to help any way that I can.

That's a wrap on our LinkedIn Masterclass with Matt Kretzman. We hope you're as fired up about your LinkedIn potential as we are. A massive shout out to Matt for pulling back the curtain on his LinkedIn success strategies. His journey from rock bottom to relationship building guru is nothing short of inspirational. To all you LinkedIn warriors out there, your hunger for growth and connection is what keeps this show going strong. Want to put Matt's LinkedIn magic into action? We've got you covered. We've distilled this episode into a power-packed action guide. It's loaded with Matt's top tips, from AI-powered profile optimization to turning your newsletter into a client magnet. Grab your free guide at podcast. Imcharleschwartz. Com. Remember, as Matt hammered home, LinkedIn success is all about authentic relationships and consistent value. Now go out there and turn those connections into opportunities. Your LinkedIn revolution starts today.