Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 81 - How to Get Clients On LinkedIn (Without Annoying Everyone)
Synopsis:
In this insightful episode of the Peaceful Profits Podcast, Host Chanelle sits down with LinkedIn coach and expert Mildred Talabi to explore how entrepreneurs can leverage LinkedIn without being spammy or salesy.
Mildred shares the results of her in-depth experiment comparing two approaches: building a personal brand through organic visibility and content vs. using Sales Navigator and direct outreach—the method taught in the Peaceful Profits program.
Mildred breaks down what worked, what didn’t, and how combining the two approaches can generate faster results and longer-lasting client relationships. She also shares the concept of “pitch slapping,” the importance of patience and consistency, and how to avoid sounding like every other marketer on LinkedIn.
If you're an entrepreneur looking to land clients on LinkedIn without annoying your audience, this episode offers the perfect blend of strategy, nuance, and practical takeaways.
Transcript:
Peaceful Profits Review: How to Get Clients On LinkedIn (Without Annoying Everyone)
[00:00:00] Chanelle: Hello, Peaceful Profits nation. This is your host Chanelle Nielson. Welcome to the Peaceful Profits podcast. I'm here with Mildred Talabi. Mildred, welcome back to the podcast.
[00:00:11] Mildred: So much for having me again, Chanelle. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
[00:00:15] Chanelle: So am I am super excited about this one because of everything that Mildred's been doing in the background to prepare for this podcast, and so it's gonna be really good.
[00:00:27] Chanelle: A Mildred is the LinkedIn [00:00:30] coach here at Peaceful Profits as well as a LinkedIn expert in her own right. She's been on LinkedIn and teaching LinkedIn for a while now. Most recently Mildred came to work for Peaceful Profits after she had already been in the LinkedIn world. And so let's talk about a little bit about your background and how you got to that, how you.
[00:00:55] Chanelle: Came to be an expert on LinkedIn.
[00:00:58] Mildred: Sure, yeah, [00:01:00] absolutely. I had already been, and I'm still in the LinkedIn world. LinkedIn is like my bread and butter. I live and breathe LinkedIn. They are not paying me for this endorsement, by the way. But so how I got into it was so I think I mentioned in the first show, but for those who weren't listening on that one my background is journalism.
[00:01:19] Mildred: I trained as a journalist. I worked in the media for a bit before I transitioned into PR and comms, but I always had a business on the side. And one of the business I had the longest was doing [00:01:30] CV resumes for mid to senior level professionals, which also then transformed into doing their LinkedIn profiles initially.
[00:01:38] Mildred: When I got more and more into LinkedIn and then fast forward 2020, beginning of 2020, I decided doing LinkedIn profiles isn't, there's much more to LinkedIn than just having a good profile to just showcase. There's so much more you can do to build your personal brand on there. So I transitioned into LinkedIn coaching what my own title, LinkedIn Visibility Coaching because I [00:02:00] teach women in particular how to build a visible personal brand on LinkedIn to help to grow your business.
[00:02:07] Mildred: And to advance your career if you're in that line of work instead. So that's how I, it wasn't a career I planned for because you don't plan for a career in social media when it didn't exist, but it is what I do now and I absolutely love it.
[00:02:21] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. So I love this LinkedIn visibility idea.
[00:02:26] Chanelle: So how did you. What [00:02:30] methods did you use to become visible on LinkedIn?
[00:02:34] Mildred: Yeah, so what got me into that visibility thing and it's where my whole background in journalism and PR comes into it, because it's that whole idea of the people that you see out in the media a lot, whether it's For interview requests or quoted and all of that.
[00:02:50] Mildred: They're not necessarily the most knowledgeable. They are the ones that are most visible. So I read it and I think it was Thomas J. Stanley that said the difference between an expert [00:03:00] and someone who's just knowledgeable is visibility. And that is really important to understand that the more visible you are, the higher the perception of you as an expert, as a thought leader, as whatever it is that you do in your space, that perception increases when you're visible.
[00:03:16] Mildred: So I knew that with LinkedIn, it wasn't just about. Just turning up and a lot of people have LinkedIn accounts, which are dormant. And so you're not making the most of LinkedIn, but when you start being visible and that means showing up by [00:03:30] posting content, by engaging with people, by actively interacting with your target audience as a business owner.
[00:03:37] Mildred: That's when you can really start to create some magic on the platform, but I will put a caution there that it's not for the faint hearted because you have to commit to the process and be in it to really win from it, on a long term basis.
[00:03:52] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. I love that background that you gave us with the idea of visibility and how [00:04:00] important that is.
[00:04:00] Chanelle: And that's really a cool thought to ponder this idea that is that it's the visibility that increases What we think of people, it increases their expert status because they're visible. And to that point, it's so important then to become visible, to get, to get seen. And so I love that. So now here inside Peaceful Profits, Mike teaches a slightly [00:04:30] different approach.
[00:04:30] Chanelle: So for people who are not in, on the inside, in this world, can you explain a little about what that approach looks like?
[00:04:38] Mildred: Yeah, so so if you can split it this way. So the visibility approach centers around building a personal brand around your business and through building a personal brand, you're able to attract your ideal clients to you and with Relatively less effort, so that's what I would say.
[00:04:58] Mildred: So the method that Mike [00:05:00] teaches in Peaceful Profits, which is also another method, there's more, the saying says there's more than one way to skin a cat. I don't know who was skinning cats to come up with that saying, but, but so the method that Mike teaches in Peaceful Profits is where you.
[00:05:14] Mildred: Use a tool LinkedIn tool called sales navigator. It's a premium tool that you pay for. And essentially link sales navigators are really powerful database where you can get all kinds of information about the, I think the count now is over 850 [00:05:30] million people on LinkedIn, but the sales navigator really allows you to distill right down to a niche of this is exactly.
[00:05:37] Mildred: So if you have an ideal client and you know that Maybe they're a CEO or a top company and, they need to have at least 50 employees. They need to make a certain amount of money, they've needed to have been in that role for, I don't know, three years. And you have this wishlist of your exact ideal client.
[00:05:56] Mildred: You can pop all those details into sales navigator and it [00:06:00] will draw up a list of. Thousands who match that on LinkedIn. So then what you do is you use that list and you approach them and you go through just basically, and this is the method, peaceful profit teaches, and you go through the, that list and you approach people and you basically propose your services to them in a gentle ish kind of way, so that's the key difference in, in the approach. Whereas my approach is get in front of the clients, get in front of your potential clients by being. invisible, they will [00:06:30] notice you and they will come to you. This peaceful province approach is more a more proactive in terms of go after them, so get the tools you need to go after the clients and then that way you can potentially get them to notice you by you knocking on their door.
[00:06:45] Mildred: So that's the key difference between the two approaches.
[00:06:48] Chanelle: Okay. So thank you for explaining that. I think that's really helpful for context because as you came into the Peaceful Profits world, you [00:07:00] decided, you're seeing, you've been doing your own thing and LinkedIn for a long time. And then you're seeing the Peaceful Profits method.
[00:07:05] Chanelle: And I love what you decided to do next, which is to do an experiment and tell us about what that experiment was.
[00:07:15] Mildred: So yes, I did. I did decide to do an experiment again. Just a little background as to why I decided to do the experiment. Love what I said in terms of building my own LinkedIn profile through being visible.
[00:07:27] Mildred: I'm building my audience to over 50, [00:07:30] 000 followers across the period of a few years. I did all of this organically in using free LinkedIn, as in I'd never done this before. needed to pay for sales navigator or anything like that. I never did. I've tried that approach in the past and it just didn't, it wasn't the best fit for me and how I do my business.
[00:07:48] Mildred: So I, I stayed with the organic route and that worked really well for me. And it's what I teach my clients. But here I am coaching on the peaceful province coaching program, which has a Advises a different [00:08:00] method. And I thought, okay, for the integrity of being here as the LinkedIn coach and not to confuse the PP clients, let me actually go through the Peaceful Profits, LinkedIn method, exactly the way it's prescribed in my in my process.
[00:08:16] Mildred: So I took the whole month of August to do this literally from the beginning of 1st of August to the 31st of August did everything exactly as. Recommended by Peaceful Profits, including hiring a VA to support some of the outreach, [00:08:30] which previously I did on my own because it's LinkedIn as part of my routine.
[00:08:34] Mildred: And because I wasn't doing that kind of heavy chasing, it didn't require so much. So yeah, I did that for 31 days and I came up to, came up with some interesting conclusions. Okay, we
[00:08:48] Chanelle: definitely want to hear those. So let's dive into what were those conclusions? What were some of the outcomes of this experiment?
[00:08:56] Chanelle: I think,
[00:08:57] Mildred: yes the key thing. To to say [00:09:00] off the bat is it's not a case of either or in fact it's a case of either or in terms of preference that some people will prefer one way more than the other, and I and with my, the people I work with in my own business that their preferences that personal branding way but some people prefer the other methods and I've had people in the past were like, Mildred, I can't.
[00:09:20] Mildred: I don't have time for this long process of building my brand. I just need clients tomorrow, so that's the first thing. One, it's a case of preference, but two, the two can actually work [00:09:30] alongside each other in terms of, I found that having a personal brand. Really accelerates the results of the process that you go through in a PP program.
[00:09:42] Mildred: And I give this example, so in, in some of the outreach methods that you do via the PP program is you reach out to cold to people cold in a sense, and who are in your ideal audience and you introduce yourself and hope that they connect. Now, if you have a strong personal [00:10:00] brand the ratio of acceptance From people you reach out to, to connect is a whole lot higher, first of all, because it's okay, this person is established and wow, they're reaching out to me.
[00:10:11] Mildred: Okay. Yes. So I, I get a really high acceptance rate anyway, in terms of when I reach out to people. So I found that was something that works as an advantage when you have a personal brand and you're reaching out to people, whether to connect or to message them or whatever it is. But the results are [00:10:30] more.
[00:10:30] Mildred: It's easier to get a positive answer when you've built up this credibility around who you are on LinkedIn. So that's what I find was pretty interesting in terms of one of the early observations. So the sales navigator approach, what it does is. supercharges the process of finding your audience.
[00:10:52] Mildred: So if you didn't, if you don't use Sales Navigator then, and you organically try and find your audience, there are ways to do it which [00:11:00] is some of what I teach, and, but those admittedly are slower burn ways. To do it, and whereas with the sales navigator approach, you can just, as I said, drop a list of, and you have immediately have a thousand people to work through, straight away or hundreds or whatever it is, and you work through them.
[00:11:21] Mildred: So that's an advantage that you have from using that method. So it gives you that instant all right, have a list of people. I'm just going to work through this. Whereas in the other way. [00:11:30] You, there's things that you do, but you'd have to find them and it's a slightly longer process in that.
[00:11:35] Mildred: So the two can work together like that in terms of build your brand, have a personal brand and do that by putting out content, which Mike does talk about and advises anyway, in a PP program that you do need to have a content and be putting out content, on a regular basis on LinkedIn. So if you're doing that, And you're engaging with your audience and you're building relationships with your audience.
[00:11:59] Mildred: And then [00:12:00] you're also on the back end doing this process of finding your target audience and reaching out to them. When you do the two together, it works well. So that's one of the key observations I found in this research period.
[00:12:13] Chanelle: Okay, that's huge. And one thing that I'm hearing that's really different between the two is speed.
[00:12:21] Chanelle: And maybe this is also me coming in with from hearing from my clients because clients will say often they get to this part of the [00:12:30] program and they're ready. They've created their offer. They want results. They're ready to get it out in front of people. And You're saying maybe the peaceful profit sales navigator way is a little faster.
[00:12:42] Chanelle: But it's a little more It's you reaching them. It's hunting versus fishing, right? you're going after the people instead of putting it your hook in the water and can we talk about time frames a little bit about how this changes the timeline of [00:13:00] How soon you can expect to see results?
[00:13:03] Mildred: Sure. So with the personal branding visibility method what you're doing is you're going through the process of social selling, and social selling is built on a foundation of your audience getting to know and trust you.
[00:13:17] Mildred: So when they do that, they essentially buy into your brand. And when they buy into your brand, it's so much easier for them to buy from you, however, as we all know in real life. You don't just meet somebody tomorrow [00:13:30] and start trusting them. You might like them, but the trust takes a little bit longer to develop, so that's the thing with that approach to, if you're going down that approach, no, it's going to take you a little while to build up that relationship with your audience, to build up that trust, to get to that place where it's okay. They know that. All right, Chanelle is legitimate. She's the real deal, and now I can maybe reach out to her myself, because you've proven long enough.
[00:13:55] Mildred: You've been consistent. So timescale, I always say when I work with my [00:14:00] clients, I say I, for everything, there's a three month season, three months, a season is about a three month period. I've put three months into it. And you will start to see some results, in this approach. Now, where the other approach speeds things up a little bit is because you almost eliminate the need to build, do that no lack and trust approach because you're just going straight in with, how do I put it?
[00:14:28] Mildred: It's they're either going to [00:14:30] take what you're giving, So if you, and it's a numbers game because of the fact that it's a numbers game and you're proactive and you're doing the numbers game, then you can control more of the odds of how many people are actually interested. Cause let's say you outreach to, I don't know, a hundred people and you find that every hundred people that you work through on your list, five people respond.
[00:14:56] Mildred: So now you know that if you want to get 20 people, then you're [00:15:00] going to outreach to. What's a hundred times four? Five hundred. Oh my God, did I go
[00:15:08] Chanelle: to school? I
[00:15:09] Mildred: don't
[00:15:09] Chanelle: know. Math is always harder on a podcast, I will tell you.
[00:15:15] Mildred: Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, what Chanelle said, five hundred, right? So you just know that.
[00:15:23] Mildred: All right, this is how many people that I need to reach to get this particular result. So being able to [00:15:30] quantify it in a numbers way can speed up the process because now you just know I need to put in a bit more legwork. However, I will say this with the numbers, the LinkedIn has made it harder on the numbers front because there's now at the time of recording this podcast and it has been for a while.
[00:15:47] Mildred: There's a limit. To how many people you can outreach to in a week. And that limit is 100 people. So if you do more than 100 people trying to reach out a week in connection, LinkedIn can [00:16:00] potentially ban you from the platform for a number of days. And I know people who've met that ban and it's it's not nice.
[00:16:06] Mildred: I've done it in the past. And it's like, why? Locked out of LinkedIn. That was a drama, but anyway.
[00:16:15] Chanelle: Okay. Thank you because that's something I'm really glad you, you've cleared up for us. And I think it's very helpful to know that it's a season, that it's three months, because I think people start panicking after a week.
[00:16:29] Chanelle: I've [00:16:30] been on LinkedIn for a week and I don't have any clients yet. What's wrong with me? And if you have this approach of it's going to be a little bit longer before you see results, you can just get into the right head space for that, let's talk about other outcomes. What else did you see or learn in this experiment?
[00:16:50] Mildred: So messaging templates. So as part of the outreach that you do at Peaceful Profits, and by the [00:17:00] way, I also have messaging templates that that I use, but they're just developed naturally from saying the same thing to people all the same time. And I think that's how Mike came up with his templates as well.
[00:17:10] Mildred: So instead of tweaking it, you just have the set messages that you reply to people as appropriate, I found So the messaging template is good in terms of when you connect with somebody you want to strike up some kind of conversation or gauge their interest or just something. What you don't want to do is just collect numbers on LinkedIn.
[00:17:29] Mildred: That doesn't [00:17:30] serve you, it doesn't serve them. So the messaging templates are a way to try to Get a conversation going. So most of the messaging templates that is used here at PP is good, but some of them I, we're going to be retiring because of so there's this one thing that's really come up a lot now on LinkedIn and there's a term that people use is called pitch slapping, so that is essentially what it means is [00:18:00] that someone connects with you, and then within Two minutes of connecting with you, they've sent you a pitch about their services or something.
[00:18:07] Mildred: So it feels like you're being slapped in the face with a pitch. So it's a very derogatory term that people are now throwing around on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, people are pitch slapping all the time. That's something that you don't wanna be on the other end of. You don't wanna be the one slapping people, yeah. And what, and so that means, so what some of what I find is that some of the templates that here at PPA little bit pitch slapping in nature. [00:18:30] So we're gonna be retiring some of those. So it's more, less in your face of, Hey, look at me, buy my b, buy my services. Here's a hundred things I can do for you.
[00:18:39] Mildred: It's that whole idea of you've gone on a first date and you're talking about marriage already, most people will run a mile. So it's about easing in into the relationship, less intense. Here's my services, more of, let's get a conversation going and see where that leads. So that's one of the the things I found that would be [00:19:00] more, that would be helpful to do a little less pitch slapping and more kind of nurturing conversation in a more natural way for potential clients, because people are so much more marketing savvy these days than they used to be, because if you're on LinkedIn, even for a minute, You will get at least in the average week, you will get at least a number of inbox messages.
[00:19:22] Mildred: You didn't want to ask for from people pitching your pitching their services to you. So most of us are fed up of it. So that's why there's [00:19:30] like a real barrier that people have against being pitch slapped. So the more we can reduce that barrier, the better it is for building that relationship with your potential future clients.
[00:19:40] Chanelle: Yeah, that's so good. And I think that there's a bunch of things I want to, first of all, pitch slap, that word is new to me and yet I get it, you hear it and you instantly go, oh yeah, that's happened to me. I've been pitched before, we feel it, what that is like. And we don't want to be the ones on the other end of that.
[00:19:58] Chanelle: The other thing that I love [00:20:00] so much is that the program. It's not stagnant. It's Mike wrote this amazing program years ago and now that's set in stone and that's what we'll always do. It's continues to grow and continues to get better. And like you said, people are more marketing savvy now than they were.
[00:20:18] Chanelle: And so what worked a couple of years ago continues. It continues to evolve, it continues to change and people don't like that anymore. New words come out and and [00:20:30] it's important that it shifts and we continue to grow with it. So I love that the program continues to grow in the way that will be most effective for people using it.
[00:20:41] Mildred: Yeah, absolutely. And that's the nature of social media anyway, right? By the time the ink finishes drying on your course or your book, I do have a book, it's oh, that's already out of date, so definitely, like you said, it's about evolving and going and upgrading what you have, rather than just keeping the same [00:21:00] thing forever and ever.
[00:21:01] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. Perfect. I love it. So I would love for you to just tell us then, we've got these two different recommendations. What is your, after doing this experiment, what is your recommendation now for people looking to grow on LinkedIn?
[00:21:22] Mildred: Okay. So My, what I'm recommending, my recommendation is, as I said, it's to merge the two, [00:21:30] it's to develop an understanding of, and I think where it starts for me anyway, is LinkedIn is not just a place of, oh, this is where I'm just going to get leads.
[00:21:41] Mildred: And this is, okay, let me say it this way. If you think of the people on LinkedIn as your potential clients, as opposed to leads, it will change the way that you think of the process, of, cause now they're not just numbers and leads, they are people, and that's very [00:22:00] much how I operate in that.
[00:22:01] Mildred: Okay. So I'm building a personal brand out here through being visible and I am connecting with people. Some of whom will go on to become my clients, some who won't, and that's Absolutely. Fine. So the first thing I would say is a mental shift of, okay I'm building for those who want it.
[00:22:19] Mildred: Cause there's going to be some people you're listening to it as you're like, I don't care about building a personal brand. I want to stay behind the scenes and just get leads. And that's okay. Then keep doing what you're [00:22:30] doing, keep doing what you're doing. But if you really want to maximize LinkedIn, it's to change this approach to say, okay, I'm going to build a brand where.
[00:22:39] Mildred: I actually become a trusted advisor to my future clients. I become somebody who they can get to know and trust. And I do that through my content. So I'm going to share content that is useful to my audience. I'm going to share content that helps my audience. And I'm not just going to drop and run.
[00:22:57] Mildred: I'm going to stick around and [00:23:00] engage with my audience. I'm going to build relationships by commenting, replying to them, commenting on their own stuff, but just being seen, so it's almost like going in a room and walking around Hi, I'm going to the party. Before you leave the party, right?
[00:23:13] Mildred: Don't go in, drink the champagne and clear off, say hello to a few people. So it's that kind of thing. And then at the same time, while you're doing that, Then you can be doing the back end things of, okay, I'm going to use sales navigator to really have a narrow focus [00:23:30] on who my audience is. And I'm going to just get my VA or whoever, I'm going to work through that process of adding 20 people a day, 20 people a day who are in the right audience.
[00:23:40] Mildred: And then I'm going to look at starting conversations with them. So you're still keeping some of the methods of the Peaceful Profits in that sense. But just you're really now changing the emphasis to if I am visible on the front end And people get to know and trust me that's gonna accelerate the process and the results that I get on the back [00:24:00] end not just in a make it faster way, but in a You build for longer, you build for longer.
[00:24:07] Mildred: So it's less of a, then this way it's more kind of a two way approach. So rather than you constantly being a hunter, you're not opening yourself up to be the hunted, so your ideal clients will be approaching you while you're doing the back end stuff. They will not be approaching you because they're getting to know you like you trust.
[00:24:27] Mildred: You're not. They're like, okay, how do I work with [00:24:30] you because of how you're showing up on the front end? So that's and when I say content i'm not just talking text only content Video content, linkedin lives. There's so many tools that you can make use of on linkedin beyond just Dumping articles or just putting posts out there You know, really to connect with your audience.
[00:24:50] Mildred: So you have that two way traffic where they are coming to you as much as you are going to them. That I believe is an ideal balance of the two worlds. [00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Chanelle: Oh, I love that. I think that you've created a really nice vision of what that can be like to, I love this idea of being both the hunter and the hunted that You're going to do everything in your power and you're going to reach out to People and I love that, too.
[00:25:18] Chanelle: I think that changes how we do everything. If we think about them as future clients, if we think about them as real people who we want to work with, that just changes how we show up. So [00:25:30] there's just so much, so many nuggets in there for us to learn from and put into practice. Any final thoughts or things that you would share from what you've learned with this experiment?
[00:25:43] Mildred: Yeah yeah so much already. I don't want to overwhelm you, but I think just that whole thing of LinkedIn works when you work it, and I think we talked about when you asked me about the timescale kind of thing, patience is required, in whatever, and [00:26:00] this is not just LinkedIn, whatever you're starting, there's going to be a learning curve, whether that's you're starting a business or you're starting on Facebook or you're learning how to.
[00:26:07] Mildred: So a hat, whatever it is, right? There's a learning curve. There's a period of time where you're going to fail, get back up, fail, get back up, and then you get your rhythm. Ride that out for LinkedIn. It's worth it. It's worth persevering. If you can persevere and you do what I've just said about doing the whole, the front end and the back end, and you persevere for a long enough season, what you're going to [00:26:30] create is a, not just.
[00:26:32] Mildred: Just a business where you're attracting your clients on a regular basis, but you also open yourself up to other opportunities that probably weren't on your radar, so I've had podcast engagement, speaking engagement, paid, all that I've traveled to places that, I never thought I would, based on being visible on LinkedIn.
[00:26:50] Mildred: And these weren't goals that I initially set out when I set out to build my business on LinkedIn, but they have happened as a result. Of the exposure that I've had from being visible. [00:27:00] So when you do that, when you're visible and you're building the backend things, it can open a door for your business to go to even higher levels than perhaps you anticipate in right now.
[00:27:10] Mildred: So go for it and just, yeah, persevere cause it's worth it.
[00:27:15] Chanelle: Oh, thank you for that. I love that. That's a great thought. For listeners. If you want to learn more about LinkedIn, about how to grow your business, about all of the things on the inside, you can go to [00:27:30] PeacefulProfits.com/call to get more information about how to work with Mildred and all of our other amazing experts and coaches.
[00:27:38] Chanelle: And we will see you next time. Bye.
