Ted Prodromou, America’s Leading LinkedIn Coach, is the award-winning, best-selling author of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business and Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business. Ted is a social selling and online advertising expert and the founder of Search Marketing Simplified, LLC, a full-service social media marketing firm.
The SMS team creates advanced LinkedIn and social media lead-generation strategies for small to medium-sized businesses with over $100 million in revenue generated for his clients.
Ted has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, New York Times, CNBC, and Forbes.
Listen to this informative Publish Promote Profit episode with Ted Prodromou about creating business opportunities with books.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How investing in mentorship is beneficial and can lead to a book deal.
- Why books can make the best business cards.
- How advertising on LinkedIn is done at the enterprise level.
- How many people don’t know how to use LinkedIn correctly.
- Why it’s vital to use a real message when reaching out to people on LinkedIn.
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@tedprodromou
Instagram
@tedprodromou
Facebook
Facebook.com/tedprodromou
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/tedprodromou
Rob Kosberg:
All right. Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here with another episode of Publish, Promote, Profit podcast. I have a great guest for you today, Mr. Ted Prodromou. Ted is the author of several books and we have, as I’ve learned, good friends in common and quite a few commonalities that we’ll perhaps speak about. Ted is America’s Leading LinkedIn Coach, which if you’re not using LinkedIn and you’re in business, Holy cow, what are you doing? Ted is an Award Winning Best-selling Author of the Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business and the Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business, both of those are Entrepreneur Press books. Ted is a Social Selling and Online Advertising Expert and the Founder of Search Marketing Simplified, SMS, a full service social media marketing firm, which is great. You’ve been featured in Entrepreneur, New York Times, CNBC, Forbes, and your SMS team has been responsible for a hundred million plus in revenue generator for your clients, so that is a big deal. And anybody that’s generated that kind of revenue for somebody, that’s who I want to talk to. So Ted welcome. Thank you for taking some time with us today.
Ted Prodromou:
Thanks for having me.
Rob Kosberg:
I think it’s going to be fun. I want to learn. I always share, there are two paths that we’d like to take on Publish, Promote, Profit. One is kind of standard and that is, in the beginning I want you to tell me about your book, about the writing of your book, any stories behind that and details about your book that maybe you want to share a little bit about LinkedIn and whatnot. Then I want to change gears just a bit. I want to hear about what your book has done for you because people that are listening to the podcast are people that are either in the throes of writing, interested in writing, or struggling with writing, and usually all the above, perhaps.
Ted Prodromou:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Been there done that.
Rob Kosberg:
Yes, right. As of I, a lot. So let’s start with that. Tell me about the writing of your first book, which I believe was the LinkedIn book. There are some commonalities with the person that wrote your foreword. I’d love to hear about the story there and how it all got started.
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. It’s just a crazy story to be honest.
Rob Kosberg:
They usually are.
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. Well, years ago, after the dot-com crash, my tech career blew up. I was with a lot of people. I worked for Cellular One when they had 40 employees.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Ted Prodromou:
Within five years I had 75 employees reporting to me. And they used to bring in coaches back in the ’80s and ’90s before they were called coaches. I thought, “I want to be a coach someday. I love what they’re doing up there.” So after the dot-com crash, I got certified as a coach.
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
And I knew nothing about marketing. I quickly realized I knew nothing about marketing and sales. So I started going to Dan Kennedy conferences, I met our friend Perry Marshall.
Rob Kosberg:
There it is. It all starts with Dan.
Ted Prodromou:
Right. Exactly. And then Perry is given this… It’s a Sunday morning, first session he’s teaching Google AdWords back when it was just starting out.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow, this is really cool.
Ted Prodromou:
So I bought Perry’s eBook for $97.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Ted Prodromou:
Became part of Planet Perry way back in 2004 or so. And that’s what led me to the book deal, which is really crazy because Perry wrote Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads, Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords. He’s written the top selling books for Entrepreneur Press.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. I love that. Perry has done an incredible job. So you have a connection there. But you were supposed to write the book together, you mentioned. What happened?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. Actually after 2008, my career collapsed again, my agency. I worked with small businesses. So I actually got a real job at 52 years old as an online marketing manager. So I’m working full time, still doing the Planet Perry stuff on the side and I get a call from this guy. “I’m Perry Marshall’s agent. Would you like to co-author two books with him?”
Rob Kosberg:
What?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. “I got Perry Marshall as an agent?” That was my first thought. And he said, “Yeah. They need Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business and Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business. Do you want to write them with him?” And then he says, “Oh, I can give you an advance too.” I’m thinking. I just kind of snickering saying, “I’ve never written a book and you’re going to give me an advance. What am I going to do?” At the time I was working full time, my mother was very sick. She was actually about ready to pass away and then I’d get two book deals and they want a deadline, in three months for two books.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh my gosh!
Ted Prodromou:
I’m thinking, “I can’t do that.” I remember also I’m thinking, “I’ve never written a book, what do I do?” So we pushed out the deadlines and stuff, it all worked out. Perry said, “I don’t even have a LinkedIn account, so you need to write that book. I’ll write the foreword. And I don’t like Twitter, I don’t really get any value of it and I’m too busy. You just write that book.” So I got two book deals by investing in mentorship with people. If you ever hesitate about investing in mentoring, it opens a lot of doors.
Rob Kosberg:
It really does. I’ve been in a number of masterminds. I’ve never been in Perry’s round table and Perry’s a friend of the show. We had him on not too long ago. I’ve never been in his round table though. I have been a part of his Renaissance group for a long time as we were talking about. But from Russell Brunson to Kevin Nations and so many others in between, the things I’ve learned and as they say, the places I’ve been because of those masterminds has made a tremendous difference in my life. Tell us about your business. You obviously wrote the book on LinkedIn, you wrote the book on Twitter and you’ve since updated those. You have multiple revisions of those books. I think the last one I saw was as recent as 2019 or even last year, maybe.
Ted Prodromou:
2019, it came out.
Rob Kosberg:
Awesome. And so what is your business? I know SMS marketing your team there. Who do you help, how do you help them, and how does that relate to what you wrote and your books?
Ted Prodromou:
So what’s really interesting, you remember Google Alerts?
Rob Kosberg:
Oh yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
So when the book came on 2019, I get a call from a PR agency and some senior vice-president at LinkedIn’s got a Google Alert about me writing about LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Ted Prodromou:
So this PR firms says, “Do you like to be introduced to LinkedIn? Would you like to go to their headquarters and meet with this guy?” From a Google alert.
Rob Kosberg:
How awesome.
Ted Prodromou:
So that opened up incredible doors. So now they give me early access to their releases and I write about them for them, that’s one thing that books have done for me.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s beautiful. And that was just happenstance because you wrote the book.
Ted Prodromou:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
Fantastic.
Ted Prodromou:
And remember in my bio, I was in the New York Times, the CNBC documentary.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
They found me on entrepreneur.com. They take excerpts of your book and write articles. So I have lots of articles on entrepreneur.com. One day this New York Times reporter calls me up out of the blue. They said, “Hey, would you like to contribute to an article? We’re writing about LinkedIn and finding a job.” “Oh, sure. I would like that opportunity.”
Rob Kosberg:
I would like that very much, please.
Ted Prodromou:
I’m in the New York Times because of that.
Rob Kosberg:
Beautiful.
Ted Prodromou:
And then this Producer from CNBC calls me one day says, “Hey, we’re doing a documentary on Twitter advertising. Can we talk to you about that for this documentary?” We talked for an hour and a half. Then I didn’t hear anything about it. Then about two months later, there’s this documentary about Twitter when it was first starting up on CNBC. Carl Quintanilla was the moderator and he’s speaking everything I said to this reporter word for word.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding.
Ted Prodromou:
Writing a book and getting it out there opens up so many opportunities.
Rob Kosberg:
That is beautiful. Let’s go back for just a second. You wrote these books while you were still working a job.
Ted Prodromou:
Yep
Rob Kosberg:
Obviously something happened either with those books, or as a product of the book, or before the book. But you left the job and you went into business for yourself and more in the marketing and agency side. Talk about that for a minute. What did that transition look like?
Ted Prodromou:
That’s when I actually joined Perry’s round table for the first time. I was still working the first month in January, the one that you just spoke at.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
It was January meeting. I said, “Okay, I’m creating my exit plan for this company and I’m going to go two more months and then I’m going to move on.” And so, we came up with a plan for my new business in Perry’s round table.
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
As that was happening, my mother actually passed away and then that company ended up laying me off. We quadrupled their revenue from 2009 through 2013.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Ted Prodromou:
I was the only one in the company that did online marketing and SEO for the company. They got this big venture capital investment because they’re doing so well. And they brought in this new boss and he sits down. He shows me this org chart with 75 people in marketing and there’s only eight of us at the time. I thought, “Wow, this is a huge department you’re going to build.” “Unfortunately, there’s no room for you in this org chart.”
Rob Kosberg:
Wow. That’s incredible.
Ted Prodromou:
They ended up laying off the whole marketing department and brought in their own agency, the venture capital firm.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Ted Prodromou:
So that was a blessing because I got a severance pay to help me launch my new business.
Rob Kosberg:
And that was right around the time you were planning on leaving anyway?
Ted Prodromou:
Right. It was like the universe answered my prayers.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Congratulation.
Ted Prodromou:
You just can’t make this stuff up, you know?
Rob Kosberg:
No. And where did that fit in to the actual launch of the books? Was that before, was that after, was that around the same time?
Ted Prodromou:
Right in the same time.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding.
Ted Prodromou:
Everything aligned perfectly.
Rob Kosberg:
Very cool. And so then shift gears, you shared some of what the book did accidentally, right? Because of your book they found you for a New York Times article, they found you to be introduced to the executive team at LinkedIn, but let’s talk dollars. What does it meant to your business? Do your books drive leads? How do they drive leads and what does that look like on a regular basis?
Ted Prodromou:
There’s nothing better than handing someone a book. It’s the best business card in the world, especially with a major publisher.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, very true.
Ted Prodromou:
I remember when the first books came out, Entrepreneur, in their magazine, they put a stack of all the Ultimate Guide books. There’s Dan Kennedy, Perry Marshall, all these big names like that and then there’s my book on top of the stack.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding. They put you on top? Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
It was best PR ever.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s great.
Ted Prodromou:
So I’m associated with all of these famous authors and marketers. It’s instant credibility and opens up speaking opportunities. I’m not speaking on the road anymore right now, but I was on 64 podcasts and interviews like this from last March until December.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding.
Ted Prodromou:
And I did no reaching out to anybody.
Rob Kosberg:
And so for your agency, which is your primary business. Do you run traffic for others, is that what you do?
Ted Prodromou:
I don’t even do that anymore. I gave up trying to keep up with Facebook Ads and Google Ads. At my online job, we were spending 50,000 a week on Google Ads to promote this marketing software, content management software. So I just don’t even bother to keep up with that. I have so many friends from the Planet Perry World, I just say, “Hey, you need Facebook Ads go to this guy.” We have referral partners. We refer business back and forth.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. And so what is business.
Ted Prodromou:
So I focus a hundred percent on LinkedIn now.
Rob Kosberg:
So you focus on LinkedIn and it’s not so much on the LinkedIn advertising part, is it? Or is it both the advertising and kind of the organic outreach part?
Ted Prodromou:
No. LinkedIn Ads are really for enterprise level. You have to have products that are 15-20K or higher to make them more worthwhile. It’s a whole different animal. So I just really teach small business owners, coaches, consultants, and I do a lot of Sales Navigator training for sales teams and teach them how to use LinkedIn.
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
And that’s what the Senior Vice President at LinkedIn who I met with, goes, “You make a living teaching LinkedIn? Why would people want any learn how to use LinkedIn?” I said, “Because people don’t know what to do, literally.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. I’ll tell you a little bit about my LinkedIn experience. What we do at Best Seller Publishing for the most part is with paid traffic. So Facebook, Instagram, even Google AdWords and more and more YouTube.
Ted Prodromou:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
But I know my ideal clients are all over LinkedIn. And honestly, this may sound terrible, I want to book my sales team. I don’t want to book myself for these conversations and calls, right?
Ted Prodromou:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s not that I’m too good for that. It’s just that I’m busy with higher level stuff and creating content for my business and so on and so forth. And so to do the initial sales calls is not what I do anymore. And so what we’ve done is we’ve built an organic kind of outreach campaign, and you tell me where we’re going right, where we’re going wrong. This is all in the last four months. We’ve built an organic outreach campaign. We’re doing about 25,000 a month in sales all organic, not spending a dime on advertising at all on LinkedIn. And I think we can ramp it up from there to be honest, because I have multiple sales guys and we’re just using my profile right now and setting up calls for my sales team from my profile. And so I’m thinking, “This fantastic. We’re actually making sales without spending money on ads, how great.”
Ted Prodromou:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
Tell me more about what that looks like for you. How do you help people? Obviously what I said was, “I don’t know what I’m doing. We’re just trying to figure it out.” But, how do you help people to really get into the weeds themselves and do this?
Ted Prodromou:
Well, the one thing when my books come out, I use Facebook Ads and I have Perry’s funnel. He shared with me exactly what to do.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
So that sells the books, gets people on my email list and then reaching out to people on LinkedIn. As you know, you’re probably getting 50 messages a day now. “Hi, I’m Ted. Need help with LinkedIn.” They send me probably five messages a day. “Do you need help with LinkedIn, Ted?”
Rob Kosberg:
They didn’t even look at your profile, obviously.
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. They use automated software and they just look for keywords or job titles and blast away. And LinkedIn is very concerned about that because everybody’s complaining or getting spammed to death.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
So they’re starting to do a lot of things behind the scenes. They’re starting to throttle some content because there’s so much garbage being posted and their messages are testing features where I can report you as a spammer, basically like email.
Rob Kosberg:
Ooh, wow.
Ted Prodromou:
If you get enough complaints, they’ll block you. So they’re testing all that now. I try to start conversations with people. We’re having a conversation right now where two people, one-to-one conversations. So you don’t use those templated message to people. I actually look at their profile, look at their website and tell them why you want to reach out. I don’t even reach out and connect with people anymore. I let people find my content and connect with me. I’m the slow and steady. I’m like the tortoise and the hare. People that are blasting messages trying to get a deal, that’s robo-calling or cold-calling.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Ted Prodromou:
And it hurts your brand. People don’t realize, “Oh yeah, I sent 3000 messages yesterday on LinkedIn.” That’s a use pill to do, but not anymore. You just send 50 safely.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
So just treat it like we’re meeting at Starbucks having a cup of coffee, having a normal conversation and you build relationships with people that way and you get real long-term customers and referrals.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Are you doing that actively for your business or at this point because of all the content that you do, people are just coming to you?
Ted Prodromou:
People are coming to me, but now I’m working with my assistant and we’re training some people to do, what they do for you. What your staff’s doing with your profile.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s great. So is that going to be part of what your agency does?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. So we help you write real messages, not templated sales pitches. I get so many invitations to connect where they’re already pitching me in the invitation. If pitching me already can’t wait. And then they get the ones they’ll send five messages in a row. You can tell it’s automated because, “Hey, did you get my last message? Are you still there?”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
That’s not the way to build a real business.
Rob Kosberg:
If you’re training people to do that, these have to be higher level people that are doing it. I had a conversation yesterday with a doctor on LinkedIn. I’m not doing most of these conversations myself, but this one caught my eye because I go on and I check it out. He’s very prestigious, Stanford Medical School, all of these TV appearances and he reached out and wanted to have a conversation with me. I responded, I said, “Hey, I was on your profile.” Obviously super prestigious Stanford Medical School all of these media. I said, “The one thing I don’t see is a book.” And I said, “Is that something that you’re looking for that maybe you feel like you’re missing?” That to me is a regular conversation, right? Obviously it’s a little forward but he did reach out to me, that’s the assumption. Is that the stuff that you’re actually training people to do, because that’s super valuable?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah, it’s simple. Don’t pitch him. Just kind of start a conversation and drop that little thing at the end. “Hey, if you’re interested. I don’t see a book on your profile.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
What’s your headline say for your professional headline under your name?
Rob Kosberg:
Mine?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Can’t remember exactly, but I had it professionally written. It’s America’s leading authority on using books to grow your business, or something along those lines. I can’t remember the-
Ted Prodromou:
A benefit-related statement.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. It’s all the Dan Kennedy direct response focusing on, do the…
Ted Prodromou:
And that’s my approach to LinkedIn profiles as Dan Kennedy’s Sales Letter, essentially.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
The headline is like a headline of an article or a sales letter or an email subject line, you get them to stop scrolling. And then in your about section you talk about the problem. Then you paint that picture of what life could be if you had a book, you are a doctor with a book. Then you kind of talk about, “I had the same problem.” You talk about your failure. “My business collapsed three times in 18 years, then I finally figured it out.” The light came on and then I said, “Here’s how I can help you at the end.”
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
We use that format and those people skim through, they say, “Oh, Ted can help me with LinkedIn marketing or whatever. He’s got credibility.” So whenever, you send those messages your professional headline is showing up right under your name.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. So they know immediately what this is about?
Ted Prodromou:
Exactly. This is how Ted can help me.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it.
Ted Prodromou:
And people just, they have their job title, CEO of whatever.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
It’s boring. 99% of people don’t change it.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Who cares? CEO of what?
Ted Prodromou:
I’ve been brainwashed by Dan Kennedy and Perry Marshall, all the best marketers.
Rob Kosberg:
Me too. Thankfully so.
Ted Prodromou:
And you got to ask for that sale.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s right.
Ted Prodromou:
When the time is right.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. No spam, right? That’s good. So tell me about your LinkedIn process. Give me an amazing success story. You’ve worked with so many people. Tell me about somebody that took their LinkedIn profile from nothing to now it really being the driver in their business and what that looks like, what they did.
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. A lot of it is sales teams. If you have five people on your sales team, you want their profiles to all look consistent. So when people come across your company, you don’t have a totally different. Obviously, your profile is your own personal profile, but you should have it with your company branding.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. Love that.
Ted Prodromou:
So it’s a consistent look and that same look as on your website. One woman I work with, she hadn’t emailed her list in three years.
Rob Kosberg:
Okay. I don’t know why, but okay.
Ted Prodromou:
Right. So we optimize her LinkedIn profile, then we started sending a few messages to people she’d already worked with. So instead of just blasting away, if you’re trying to get some quick sales reach out to people you’ve worked with in the past. And she had just gotten back into consulting, HR consulting. We came up with a Dean Jackson, nine-word email.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, I love those.
Ted Prodromou:
Have you heard of that?
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, I love Dean. He’s a good friend.
Ted Prodromou:
We kind of reactivated her network with simple little question. And then she said, “By the way, I’m back into consulting. If you know anyone that needs any help with their HR department.” Within two weeks, somebody reached out to her and says, “Hey, I need your help.” She got a $60,000 contract.
Rob Kosberg:
What! That’s fantastic.
Ted Prodromou:
And then two weeks later, she got a $40,000 and she just closed another $50,000 contract.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Ted Prodromou:
I sent only a couple messages, simple little, “Hey, I’m back in consulting.”
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding.
Ted Prodromou:
“Need any help or know anyone that needs any help.” But she reached out to people that she’d already worked with or knew them from different networking groups or associations, so they weren’t cold outreaches.
Rob Kosberg:
So explain the nine-word email and can you tell me roughly what hers was?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. I don’t think I remember exactly, but.
Rob Kosberg:
Roughly.
Ted Prodromou:
Actually, it was right around the beginning of the year. There’s new laws in January that take effect for HR. And she’s in Colorado. She came up with 50 new laws that businesses have to comply with in Colorado. She started writing little articles about that and she talked about something about the compliance. “Are you ready for the new compliance laws in Colorado?” And they’re thinking, “Oh crap.” And then they went to our website and saw, “Here’s 50 things that should have been done by January 1st and you are now out of compliance.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yikes!
Ted Prodromou:
So I was kind of just getting him on that back in the radar.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. For those listening, a nine-word email is, like you mentioned Ted, a re-engagement campaign. For Best Seller Publishing it might be something like, “Are you still interested in writing a best-selling book?” Right? Just something short like that. And so she did that regarding compliance, which is fantastic. That’s a little fear-based, but appropriately so. And so who did she send that to? Did she send that to 30, 40, 50 people a day that were kind of hand selected on her LinkedIn profile?
Ted Prodromou:
I think probably 30 people total.
Rob Kosberg:
30 people total. You’re kidding. OMG!
Ted Prodromou:
She was in the industry for a long time and then she was trying to do other stuff. Then she was getting back into it.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Wow.
Ted Prodromou:
So she had a good reputation behind her.
Rob Kosberg:
And she’s done $150,000 already this year, in just the first couple of months or six weeks of the year. Imagine if she sent more emails.
Ted Prodromou:
Exactly.
Rob Kosberg:
That is great.
Ted Prodromou:
So one of my ones that I use, if I work with a client, usually I sell blocks of five or 10 hours at a time now, for one-on-one.
Rob Kosberg:
Okay.
Ted Prodromou:
And when we’re done three to six months down the road, I’ll send them a LinkedIn message. “Are you still using LinkedIn to grow your business?”
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
And that reactives about 10-15% of my clients.
Rob Kosberg:
Really? And they come back on and pay you for more coaching and consulting?
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. They say, “I got so busy because it was working I stopped doing it.” So it’s a typical. Generate business, then you have to do the work and you don’t keep the marketing going.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. That’s fantastic. The number of people that have a hard time with paid advertising is enormous. Paid advertising is tough to figure out. If you can figure out it’s a little like the Holy grail, right? It’s a little like, if you can really get it working, it’s like putting a dollar in the machine and two or three or four coming out. But there’s always moving parts and challenges and ads go bad and whatnot. And so most people are always going to struggle with that tremendously and never really get it working. And here is a system on LinkedIn where you don’t ever have to spend a dollar on advertising and you can find your perfect ideal client, right? Through Sales Navigator and through the search options in LinkedIn and start a conversation with someone that you would never have an opportunity to start that conversation with. It’s amazing that more people aren’t doing this. What holds them back? What’s the problem?
Ted Prodromou:
Well, sometimes they get too aggressive. They’re not patient. Made me thinking you’re like a farmer, your planting seeds and the seeds will all grow at a different rate and not all will become clients.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Ted Prodromou:
We’re so impatient now. “Get clients right now. I got to close three more deals this week.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
So they don’t take that time and I’m not looking for a hundred clients at a time. My membership site, I’d like to get more people into it. Sure, that’s my low end product, they’re huge. Can you handle a hundred more books this week?
Rob Kosberg:
Not this week, give me a couple months.
Ted Prodromou:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
But not this week.
Ted Prodromou:
So you don’t need to send a hundred messages a day.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Ted Prodromou:
One thing that works really well, only 40% of people on LinkedIn log in more than once a month.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow. No kidding.
Ted Prodromou:
So 60% are employed or they’re not looking for a job. They think it’s a job site. So if you use Sales Navigator you can see search for your ideal client. Then it’ll say these are people that have posted in the last 30 days.
Rob Kosberg:
Really?
Ted Prodromou:
So you go and see what they posted and then you interact with that post, if they look like it’d be a good fit for you. And they keep posting, you keep interacting. They’re going to invite you to connect probably because you’re liking and saying nice things about their content. I don’t even bother to reach out to them. I let them reach out to me because then it’s a warmer lead.
Rob Kosberg:
This is gold here. That’s a gold nugget right there. So just to be clear. In Sales Navigator, in the search function, you can search for your ideal client, whatever they are, coach consultant or whoever, C-suite. And then there’s a place where you can ask how long since they last posted on LinkedIn. What does it look like?
Ted Prodromou:
It’ll tell you how many changed jobs in the last 90 days, which is gold for a consultant because a lot of times you change jobs you want to bring in a consultant to help you make a good impression.
Rob Kosberg:
Okay.
Ted Prodromou:
Or it says, “Here’s 32 people that have posted in the last 30 days,” right? “At the top of the screen.”
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Ted Prodromou:
And you follow those people and they don’t know you’re following them.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Ted Prodromou:
You can view profiles, they don’t know you viewed their profiles on Sales Navigator.
Rob Kosberg:
How is that? I thought you can always see who viewed your profile.
Ted Prodromou:
In the regular LinkedIn, but not Sales Navigator.
Rob Kosberg:
Okay. Gotcha.
Ted Prodromou:
So you can actually stalk people.
Rob Kosberg:
And they don’t know.
Ted Prodromou:
But then you see if we’re posting content, that’s when you jump on there interact with their content. Don’t just say, “Great post Joe.” Actually read their article and ask them questions about the article. Ask the Dean Jackson, you want a response from him, so entice that.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Hot potato, right?
Ted Prodromou:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Ted Prodromou:
And then after you’ve done that-
Rob Kosberg:
You throw them the hot potato and then they throw it back.
Ted Prodromou:
Two or three times back and forth, they’ll say, “Hey, I want to connect with Ted. He seems to know what he’s doing.” Plus you’re seeing my professional headline every time I comment on there.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. Very good.
Ted Prodromou:
So get your profile in order first using that direct marketing approach and then just interact with people that are already there and then reach out to former clients or friends of friends.
Rob Kosberg:
Beautiful. Love it. That’s some good gold right there for people. I bet people could start just take a couple of these things and start making money with it immediately by just doing some organic searching and outreaching on LinkedIn and on Sales Navigator. 30 messages she sends out, she makes $150,000. That’s incredible. Tell us, you do coaching. It doesn’t sound like at the moment you’re doing much in the way of actual done for you, but it sounds like there’s going to be an element of that, which you and I might need to have another conversation soon because I want to hear about that. Where’s the best place for people to learn about what you offer, what you do, and how they can reach you?
Ted Prodromou:
This is a really hard one.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. LinkedIn.
Ted Prodromou:
yourlinkedincoach.com.
Rob Kosberg:
yourlinkedincoach.com. I love it. Can you use LinkedIn in URL and it’s not a problem?
Ted Prodromou:
They haven’t come after me yet.
Rob Kosberg:
I guess not. Okay, that’s good. And you mentioned a membership site, you want to tell us where that is and how someone can maybe get your content and materials.
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah. I started it actually. I did a LinkedIn course called LinkedIn Accelerator. You do it in almost six weeks and you do the calls and then everybody goes away and they didn’t implement it. So I started doing monthly calls to follow up. So I added that to part of the course and then I realized most of my clients were over 50. They’ve been through the ringer with me career wise, up and down and they’re all in my community, so I started Freedom Accelerator Academy.
Rob Kosberg:
Okay.
Ted Prodromou:
It’s basically, we do a call every Thursday now, since the pandemic, where I bring in experts, you could be an expert guest. I’d love to have you as a guest.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, I’d love to.
Ted Prodromou:
And they’re teaching people how to really grow their business when they’ve transitioned from a successful corporate career into being a solopreneur.
Rob Kosberg:
Yup.
Ted Prodromou:
And we just meet, we have a Facebook group and it’s just a great way. Everybody really is contributing a lot. I’m probably having a lot of fun with that.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. And so is that freedomaccelerator.com or where do they find that?
Ted Prodromou:
freedomaccelerator.academy.
Rob Kosberg:
freedomaccelerator.academy. Awesome.
Ted Prodromou:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s the place to find Ted. I would check both of those out. yourlinkedincoach, that’s an easy one. How do you forget that? That’s now burned into my brain. I’m not going to forget that. And obviously I’d love to connect further and speak to your group. I think that would be a lot of fun. There’s quite a bit of my own failures and history and then using books to accelerate and blow up my business at the suggestion of the one and only Dan Kennedy. He’s the one that suggested I write my first book back in 2007. A lot of history there, Ted.
Ted Prodromou:
When did you write the first book after he told you in 2007?
Rob Kosberg:
I started in 2008 and I finished in late 2009.
Ted Prodromou:
Okay. It took me three years to write my book. When Perry told me I had to write a Twitter book when I went to his house for one of his intensives.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s doggone hard to write a book. The first year after me writing my book was 2009, you know what was happening in 2009. Stock market was down 55%, real estate was crushed, and my brand new business went from zero to over a million dollars in the first year all because of my book and then exploded into multi-millions thereafter and that’s not my current business. This business was an adjunct business that came because of my other business. And so, I always look back and I talk about my million dollar mistake. If I’d have written my book a year earlier, I’d made another million bucks.
Ted Prodromou:
Exactly.
Rob Kosberg:
I should’ve got started sooner.
Ted Prodromou:
The universe has to align perfectly.
Rob Kosberg:
I guess so. Well, I’m glad the universe aligned and brought us together. Thank you again for being on the show. We’ll make sure that we let folks know about you because, man, I’m a big fan of what you’re doing, I’m a big fan of LinkedIn, and you are the man that wrote the book on it. So Ted, thanks for being with us today.
Ted Prodromou:
Hey, thanks for having me.
