The secrets to staying visible and building lasting client relationships in a competitive digital landscape are just a listen away.

Karen Gunther, founder of Stay Visible Marketing, joins me to talk about how businesses can stand out and build authentic relationships in the digital age. With over 25 years of experience in business development, Karen shares practical tips for using tools like LinkedIn, email marketing, and CRMs to keep your business top of mind. She emphasizes the importance of consistency, authentic communication, and leveraging technology to connect with prospects and clients.

Karen also shares her take on how businesses can overcome common mistakes, like neglecting follow-ups or failing to use tools effectively, and explains why staying visible isn’t just about being seen—it’s about building trust and credibility over time.

Highlights:

• How to stay visible in a crowded marketplace by using consistent and authentic communication strategies.
• Actionable tips for leveraging LinkedIn and CRMs to build and maintain stronger client relationships.
• Understand how personalized touches, like voice and video messages, can make your outreach stand out.
• Explore ways to simplify your marketing efforts while keeping your business top of mind for customers.
• Insights into the power of continuous learning to adapt and thrive in today’s fast-paced digital world.

Connect with Karen:

Website: www.stayvisiblemarketing.com 

Email: karen@stayvisiblemarketing.com 

In appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by taking the

3 Card Sampler – you won’t regret it.

AND … Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my

complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky

listener!

Connect with me:

http://JanicePorter.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/

https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1

https://www.instagram.com/socjanice/

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Karen, welcome to this week's episode of

relationships rule. Today I'm excited to welcome Karen Gunther

to the show. Karen has over 25 years of experience as a

professional business development manager, and is the

founder of stay visible marketing with a strong

background in sales, Karen specializes in helping B to B

business businesses connect with prospects and clients through

email marketing LinkedIn and enhancing their overall digital

presence. She's passionate about networking and relationship

building, offering expertise in crm management to support

consistent and meaningful connections throughout the sales

process. Karen is here to share her insights on creating

authentic business relationships that drive success. Welcome.

Welcome to the show. Karen, super excited to be here.

Janice, thank you. You're my pleasure. We've been talking

about this for a while and and I guess I want to start by saying

I love that you you see the power and value of LinkedIn to

help people with their businesses, because you know

that that's where I live and and yet, a lot of people who who use

LinkedIn don't see the relationship side of it. They

see content, content, content, and that's about it. So can we

start there? Can we just, can you give me your take on how you

use it with your clients, or what you you know, what you

teach or what you share with people? Yeah, my,

my company's name is stay visible marketing, and

there's a reason for that, because I believe it's about

visibility. And whether you're at a networking event, in

person, virtually on LinkedIn, your website, how often you're

reaching out to people with email marketing or general

emails, it's all about visibility. And with so much

noise in the marketplace, it is so important to have that

ability to reach through that noise, is the way I look at it.

So when it comes to LinkedIn, specifically, as a rule, it's

important to understand the algorithm. Now, I don't know

what the algorithm is, only LinkedIn knows what the

outcome changes all the time, right, right? And

it's being

changed all the time. In fact, I learned

something today that changed since I last looked at it to

this specific action two weeks ago, which is really

interesting. So it seems like once a month there's something

else that's changing when you go to look for a people within a

company specifically. And this is being broadcast in November

of 24 so we have this timestamp for it. When you go look for a

company and you go look for the people in the company, you used

to be able to do multiple search terms to narrow down the person

you were looking for. Now they only give you one in the keyword

part, yes, yes. Just learned that this morning when I was

working with somebody. So it's just they're constantly changing

things. So when it comes to the algorithm, and I was training a

person this morning about this saying, LinkedIn was purchased

by Microsoft in 2016 and they have done a phenomenal job of

monetizing it. So the important thing is, is that, how can you

use the the algorithm that LinkedIn uses for monetization

for their own business, to help you with your business. That's

how I look at it. So it comes down to visibility. So how do

you use that visibility? Well, they look at interactions. So

when you are posting, you want to make sure that there's a hook

in there so that people will respond, and then that creates

an opportunity for you to talk to people. If you're going to

like something, you not don't want to just like it. You want

to also comment on it, because if you comment on it, that has

more credibility when it comes to the more hooks for the

algorithm. If you're going to repost something, repost

something with a comment, because that helps you and the

person that posted the original post. And when they go to their

notifications, they will see that you did that. So the more

often you're popping up, the more visible you are, the more

opportunity they have to be reminded that you exist. There

are so many ways to connect with people. There are so many

connections that we've all made over our careers, it's almost

overwhelming. You don't remember you know somebody. So to be able

to make sure that when you are, you know, calling on a

particular prospect or trying to get deeper into particular

client, you want to make sure that wherever they are that

you're popping up and that visibility can be done through

LinkedIn if you do it carefully and you do it authentically.

That's

so true. I know that's a big piece of teaching

people how to use LinkedIn effectively in the work that I

do, too. So I. You give me an example of a company that you

might be working with. Did you work with sales teams in or do

you work with you? I know that you do work with different

kinds, different kinds of clients. You have a heart, and

so you help people at university and you you do some work with

students or grad students and things like that. But you also

work with individual, small business owners and bigger

teams. Is that correct?

All of the above? Okay, absolutely. I work with

companies that are, you know, up to 100 million, down to, you

know, nonprofits. So I literally just brought on a new client in

the last 24 hours. That's a nonprofit that needs help with

getting certain marketing out and helping help with their

website to get it updated, little things like that. I work

with primarily business to business companies, because I

find that the logic associated with business works a little

easier for me. I can understand that more than going business to

consumer. Consumers have a lot more variability, so I prefer

the business to business landscape. But more importantly,

I work individually with the sales people, as well as with

the sales team. I recently served with a new client where

they want me to help them review their website and making sure

their branding and their their messaging is correct with what

they're saying the workplace right now. They also want me to

work with their individual sales reps, because we were going to

be starting a LinkedIn posting, you know, campaigns for them.

And I want to train their sales reps, not only to have a good

LinkedIn, strong LinkedIn profile, so that when they're

going after their prospects and clients, they look very

professional, but also to train them how to use technology,

tools, chat, GPT, the scheduling task, the scheduling piece on

LinkedIn and others, to amplify the company's message. So when

we do the posting for the company, the sales reps are

authentically posting and reposting and amplifying that

message. And so I'm literally working with a brand new sales

rep tomorrow that's as an on an individual basis, teaching them

technology tools to make them more savvy and better and to up

level their their their own personal profile and their brand

in the marketplace, but by doing that, rising up the brand of the

company as well. So it's an organic search. It's an organic

lift all the way around. I also started with helping them with

their sales force, and I will probably be putting together

more email templates for them to use in their Salesforce, so that

it makes it easier to use technology for their sales reps

to reach out to their prospects and clients with a message that

makes sense. It

does and it doesn't okay in the sense that

you're such a tech guru that that, in a way, that's your

secret sauce, or your your zone of genius is making it easier

for people, or seeing where you can help them make it easier by

using some tools, technical tools in in the process those

things, like we were talking offline about about a new app

that was being shown to us, or something I see, I just glazed

over When it happened on a call that we were both on, and you

understood it way more than I did, because I'm just the people

person. I'm not I'm not the tech person, I'm the people person.

And I don't say just, I shouldn't say that, I just mean

that that's my my zone of genius is building relationships with

people, and that's what I like to teach people to do as well.

In the process that you go through with, say, these new

sales people that you work with, I'm just curious. I remember

back, I'll give you a little back story. And back in the day

when I was doing corporate training, and I would be the

trainers, were always the last people to go out to the customer

site. They put in, I worked for the telephone company, or I

contracted to them, and somebody would sell them, the sale the

phone system, somebody else would design it and implement it

so that, you know, it rang three times here before it went to

this person and all of the different things around it. And

then the installer would go in and install it. And then we came

in and we trained on how to use the system, from the

receptionist to the CEO to the IT people all different versions

of what they had to do. But inevitably, we'd get there and

we'd see how it was set up, where we had the book that

showed and we go, like, why did they do it this way? Right?

Because nobody asked a trainer or asked the right people to get

those answers. So when you get these new sales people, do you

ever wonder what this guy's doing selling, or what that

woman's doing in that kind of industry? Does it ever not mesh

for you when you're dealing with them? Because you have to deal

with what you have but I. Does that ever happen?

Yeah, it actually does. Wonder what the heck's

going on here. Why did I hire this person? Yeah, I need to do.

How do we salvage this situation? Yes, on a different

tact, I do absolutely agree with that, and I will, I will respond

back to the management, yeah, and provide my concerns. Yeah.

Okay, good, absolutely. 100% and that's part of the I do

individualized sales training. I can do, like group sales

training, webinars, seminars, things of that nature. I have no

problem doing that in person or, you know, virtually. It doesn't

matter. I'm happy to do that. But I find that the greatest

shift can happen when I work one on one with a person, regardless

of who they are in the organization. If I can work with

them one on one, we figure out where their speed bumps are with

the technology, and then we move them past that so that their

lives are easier on a day to day basis. And like I worked with

somebody this morning who had their outlook set up, but they

didn't have it set up so that the images downloaded. So every

time they went into an email, if they wanted to see the images,

they had to click the button to download the images. Is a very

common thing, right? Well, what happens is the as I went

through, I said, Do this, and I walk them through the process

for the settings, and I had him go through and shift that so

that it downloads it completely right? Every single time. He's

like, Oh my gosh, that's going to save me so much time every

day. And it's just little things like that that just make our day

so much better, you know. But I sit there and I wonder, why

isn't somebody going through and helping these people, you know,

work through this process, you know?

Oh, I know, I totally can identify with that.

Because some things I think, Gosh, I gotta call, I'm an apple

girl. Gotta call apple and just ask them about this. And then I

never get around to it. So I'm still doing the same things the

wrong way, or whatever. So I get that, um, so, uh, questions. Um,

you do email marketing with some of your clients, yes, and um,

email marketing, it's become more challenging, I think, and

more complex. So how do you ensure that your clients emails

land in the inbox and resonate with their audience, because

it's hard these days to even get people to open those emails.

Yes, that's two different tasks. One is to get

at landing in the email box, landing in the inbox. That's an

entirely different task that has to do with the person's domain

and their DNS text records. Huh, exactly about six years ago.

About five years ago, the that shift happened where outlook

decided to no longer accept third party email platforms. And

so you're saying that email focus

on you focus on Outlook. Only, no, oh no. I'm

just using that as an example, okay, okay?

Because when you're in a Gmail inbox, you'll see that it has

your main email and it has a social and it has promotional

okay tabs. That's just what most people see. Yeah, Outlook

decided to go to something simpler, similar to that, made

it different, and as a result of that, I had to have a crash

course in it and how the handshakes work between servers

to get emails delivered. And I didn't know anything about that,

but now it's just second nature for me to whenever I set up a

new client, to go in and to manage this process to make sure

their stuff gets delivered. So there's that one piece of it

right there is getting it into the inboxes. For those of you

who are listening to this podcast, it's called the DNS

text record, feel free to contact me. My information will

be in the show notes, and I'll be happy to walk you through

that so you can understand that for yourself. For that, it's too

long to explain for this process, talking about here's

way too techie. It's not even worth it to take the time to

talk about that. Now the second thing is, is that, how do you

get the person to open it? Well, there are times and days that

are better to send so that emails will be seen as part of

the normal business day. Somebody think about how you

yourself approach your email in the morning. So in the morning

you get you either looking at your phone having your cup of

coffee, or you're at your computer and your finger is

hovered over the delete button, or you're swiping delete one of

the two. And so that means everything that comes in in the

morning prior to the normal business day starting is now

subject to being easily deleted. So you want to make sure to send

your emails during the normal business day, so not before

people start their business day, and not right, and not during

lunch, because that's another time where people spend time

deleting. So it's just there's a time frame that you send it now.

So the time that you send the email indicates whether somebody

will actually open it or not. The only other thing. Thing that

is contingent on whether somebody will open the email or

not, is the subject line, Oh, there's one other thing and that

they actually know you. So if you receive an email from

somebody you don't know, then you look at the subject, subject

line to see, gosh, do I Is there something beneficial for me in

this email? That's That's it, that that's all there is. So you

always want to make sure it comes from a person's name or a

well known company, you know, if it's a well known brand. So if

you're a smaller company, you want to make sure it comes from

your name as the business owner or the salesperson. And then you

want to make sure that this the subject line. So that's just

for, like, third party emails, even for sending emails during

the day, just as a normal course of business, to reach out to

people, to prospect, you want to make sure that your subject line

is not very long, and that it has you know, relevant

information, so that somebody will open it, and then once

people open it, that's where we get to the does this resonate?

Right? What I really love, and I'll give you these kudos.

Janice, what I really love about your newsletters that you send

out is you do have an engaging subject line. Number one, they

are sent at a time that makes sense for people to open it, at

least for me. And the third thing is, is that I know that

when I receive those newsletters from you, that there's going to

be something in there that will touch me and make me think about

something differently, because that's what I've because I've

spent time looking at your newsletters. At first it was

like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, right. It's just

another newsletter. But when I stopped to actually take the

time to look at the newsletter and read it, I'm like, oh,

there's going to be something interesting in here. I'm going

to want to read this. And so I will set it aside so that I have

time and I'll flag it so I can go back and look at it, so that

I can say, Okay, I went through and I read it, and I picked up

the one really cool tip. And it may not even be the thing that

you were intending for people to pick up Janice, because that's

the interesting thing. But I do know that when it comes to

certain people, when they send me emails, that there's going to

be something, you know, in that there for me. So let's get let's

go to the next point. You're sending out marketing emails to

people you don't know and who don't know you. How do you make

sure it resonates? Well, you need to understand their

industry. You need to understand their challenges. You need to

understand what keeps them up at night. You need to understand

what they might be interested in learning more about. And you

need to provide education. If I'm just trying to hawk

something and sell it. It's not going to go through, but if I

offer education as part of the content, then it becomes more

valuable. It's

interesting, because that's the part I like

the best. I want to make sure that I can teach them something.

And what I've started to learn, though, is that it's okay to

repeat yourself, because not everybody reads it every time,

and so on and and it's different way of saying the same thing. It

might start to connect with, actually, what something you

just said, which is that you know the flavor of my of my

newsletter, well, that's what you get over time, right? But

that that the message is clear, right? It's either about, well,

there's different parts to it, but it's about, you know,

gratitude, or it's about, you know, trusting people and

staying connected and all of that good stuff. So thank you.

Thank you for for that. And okay, just a minute, there was

something else around that I wanted to ask you. Well, let's

go to, let's go back to staying visible. Because it's important

that we stay visible in the marketplace, that we're in front

of the people that we want to be in front of, in a, in a in a

useful way. But what are the common mistakes that businesses

make that cause them to lose visibility. And how do you help

them address these issues? So salespeople, it's, it's kind of

an important thing that they stay in front of people. And

we've all, I find we forget the follow up, or we forget to come

back to people that we've you know, spent the time opening the

door with. Do you find that with your people that you train?

Yeah, what

I would where I would say that's, that's a very

large subject. So let me, let me contain my subject. Let me

contain my comments to the sales rep. Because there's a lot of

different there's a lot of different areas to that subject.

When I contain my comments to the sales rep, specifically, I

would see failure to use a CRM, be it HubSpot, gold mine,

Salesforce, whatever it is, I'm a Salesforce baby. So I'm a

Salesforce girl, and I find it to be very helpful. And what I

can't remember everything, and neither can anybody else. So

based on that, the sales reps need to use some sort of CRM,

because you're having to contact so many people, so many times

with. So many different messages that you want to be able to

track what you've done, how often you've done it, when

you've done it, so that you know that you're not pestering the

person too much or too little, and that you provide and you

schedule those tasks for yourself, so that sales, sales

force, or the CRM that you're using becomes your brain to

remind you, so that when you get in in the morning, okay, I have

these 10 things I need to do today, and then you set your

next tasks, you know, for whatever the future dates are

for those so that you're feeding into the system, so that over

time, the first half hour of the day is 100% spent doing specific

prospecting based on previous actions. And I find that most

sales people are reticent to use their CRM tool. But I must say,

this new generation, this Gen Z, that's coming into the

workforce, they are completely willing to use a CRM, which I

have found that to be really gratifying and so much easier to

work with Gen X. Heck no, that's my generation. Nope. We have no

interest in doing that. Millennials are kind of

interested, but only if they see how, based on my experience, and

see how it benefits them, and only if they can see that, and

then the the Gen Z's what I've noticed when they come into

they're like, Okay, this is a tech tool I get to use cool.

They does it for me, great, and they just move into it, and

they've got no problem. And I've been really gratified to work

with the new generation coming into sales, I was a little

concerned at first, but

okay, so they like the tech things because

they grew up with it and they're comfortable with it. How the

people skills? Zero? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah,

yeah,

absolutely zero people skills. So you have to

train them more on how to talk. So what I do for that is the

second thing that I find that people don't do that they should

be doing, is they should be practicing more. So the most

important thing you can do to practice is to take your phone,

put it into Voice Memo mode, work with some sort of AI or

yourself to create some sort of script that you can use. Not

that you're going to only use a script, but it gives you

something to work with, to start with, because if you don't know

a product, you have to start somewhere. You need to bone up

on the product. You need to understand the you know, the

brochures and the information and why it benefits the client.

And you need to go through and use that voice memo function on

your phone, because there's something about saying the

script when you are just reading it. I could just pick up a piece

of paper and read it or read it off a monitor, but when you have

that voice memo on and you've got that record on, it changes

everything in the brain, and all of a sudden everything's engaged

and you're practicing, how do these words come out of my

mouth?

How do I sound? Do I sound authentic? Does it

sound authentic?

Exactly, exactly? And then what happens from that

is you're like, Oh, I'm stumbling over saying don't or

do not. You know, I find that contractions work well when

you're speaking, but not when you're writing. So I tend to not

use contractions when I write, but I will use contractions when

I speak. So it's just a difference between speaking and

writing and learning. What does that sound like, and does this

sound correct? So where are people not taking advantage of

opportunities? They're not using CRMs. They're not practicing,

you know, in a live situation where they can hear themselves

and going back and verifying. And the other thing that I find

that people don't do that they should be doing more of is

continuing to learn. Oh, really, just the constant learning there

is, there are so many different ways to learn. There are so many

different ways to improve your skills. Mm, hmm, in all areas of

not only your life, but in your business, aspect of how to do

this better, how to do that better. You know, constantly

learning, you know, listening to podcasts like yours and others,

where you can pick up one more thing of, oh, I didn't think to

do it like that. I remember I had this large meeting that I

was going into, and I really wanted to sound smart. Wanted to

make sure I had all the questions. So I went into my my

podcast app, and I typed in, you know, how to whatever it was,

how to do something or another in a sales call, and, like,

three or four different podcasts, you know, pulled up

ones I've never listened to before, and I was in the

airport, so I took the time to listen to them, and I was busy

taking notes, and I was ready when I had that meeting to ask

some of those questions. So I sounded really smart, and I

actually got really good information. So now those

questions are part of what I do. But it was really interesting

because it was like, Okay, I better bone up on this. I better

learn. There's so many resources out there right now that you

know, something that people don't do, that they should be

doing, is continuing to sharpen that, sharpen that sword. You

know,

I'm, I'm surprised that you said that, in

a way, because we have so much at our fingertips today to

answer whatever question. I mean, if I if I'm watching

Jeopardy, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I

don't understand something, or I don't know the I'll go and right

away on my phone and. Find out more about it, or if I'm, you

know, whatever I'm crossword puzzles, whatever it is I'm

doing, I want to find out more, or just something I hear on

television that I want to know more about. But we also are so

busy today. Now, I'm also surprised, though, because the

young people are the the Gen Z's you were just referring to. They

were brought up on their phones. And they go to it for

everything. So I think they go to

it for entertainment, yeah, with their

friends, but not for business purpose, and not to learn,

not to learn interesting. Yes, that really,

that's really interesting. And, and then the other thing, when

you said, you just said, they go to it to communicate with their

friends, which is, like the most passive communication piece

there is, right? Which is why they're not good at social

skills. Which is so when you have a client like that, a sales

rep that you're that you're talking to, like that, how do

you bring them around? Because are they going to say, Oh, sure,

I'm going to practice this on my phone, talking to myself. Or do

they willingly do it? Or do you have to push? I

have to push. I have to say, I have to have them

set goals. I have to have them practice. And I ask them how the

experience was. So they go off and they do it on their own. The

next time I meet with them, how was that? What did you learn? So

I asked the probing questions, what did you learn by doing it?

And you can tell really quick if they're lying, yeah, you know.

But most of the time, because it's a tech thing and it's a new

way to use technology, they already like using it's kind of

like, oh, I can do that. Oh, that's cool. I'm going to try

that, because they're really so interested in learning, but they

just don't know all of the resources. And you would think,

well, God, they have a phone in their hands. Well, they don't

use the well, they don't use those apps. Yeah, you know. So

if you introduce them to the apps, they're like, Oh, okay.

I'd say, when you're driving, you know, listen to the podcast,

and don't do it every time. And go listen to music and take a

break and let your brain relax, for sure, but at least once a

day, be listening to something.

You know, it's so funny. Do you see how old I am

when I say this, but it reminded me what you just said of when I

was at the telephone company and I was training soft, what we

called soft skills, to receptionists, and one of the

things that I used to do is sit with the receptionist and listen

to how they answered the phone and listen to their voice and

whatever. And I would say to you know, the odd one. Have you ever

heard yourself on the phone? And I would give them something to

to say, and I say, you know, or they had to record the the

greeting on the voicemail system, or whatever. And I say,

you know, go home, go in your bathroom. Don't let anybody hear

you and record yourself. And then listen to what you sound

like and you'll know whether you need to change it or not. That's

what you used to have to do in the old days, right? And it

wasn't as easy because he didn't have a phone too. You had to get

a little tape recorder Exactly. Yeah, I understand all that, but

it's just so interesting, okay? And it just, there's just so

many interesting things that the kids today, the kids today, the

young people today, do so differently than than we do and

but so much

is the same in terms of how business works. It

was interesting. I just was meeting with a student. You

mentioned that I mentor students. I mentor students at

the local school, they have a course specifically for how to

integrate the students into a professional life, yeah. And

which is great. So I was talking to the student today, and he

said, Oh, by the way. I said, Is there anything else? Because

we're wrapping up. He said, Yeah, one more thing. He says,

You do marketing stuff, right? I said, Yeah. And he wants to go

into the supply chain, and so it's nothing to do with

marketing. He says, Well, I was just at this event last week,

and I think they need help with their marketing. Is it okay if I

present the information? I said, Oh, what event was it? And he

told me. I said, oh, and I held up my phone and I said, I'm

already texting with the executive director of that

organization. I started working with them two days ago. Oh,

that's so funny, because I and by the way, the person you met

with, you know, three weeks ago at the networking event. Was

also at that event, but she was in the wrong place, so you

didn't recognize her. So now you have a way to go back to her,

you know. So now we have this total connection. I said, if you

could please do me a favor, could you please let that person

know that you know me and make the recommendations? And now

he's hearing from two people that I'm a good person to work

with, right? Well, that person turned around immediately sent

me that text not an hour ago. Nice, nice saying, oh, this

person recommended you as well. I mean, isn't that it? And isn't

that the way? So business still works that way. It's all of who

you know. And I think that the the incoming you know, business

professionals very much value what their who, their network

knows more so than anything. It's surprising to me that you

would think that they would just go online and find sources, but

they don't. They talk to their the people around them,

certainly

the the business students learn that faster. I

remember doing a. Uh, going up to with the local university for

their MBA students had an event, and it was to teach them how to

network properly, and they wanted some business

professionals there to to help with the the situation in the in

the event, and there were a lot of accounting students and a lot

of pharmacy students, and they struggled. They struggled with

what to say in a networking setup, or whatever. The business

students, I think, have to come about. They have to learn, or

they do learn more quickly how important it is to build your

network, yes, but yeah, but yeah. Today it's a lot of them

were struggling with that and, and, and it's fun to be able to

share with them, you know, conversation, or to to show by

having those conversations with them in the groups, and they

start to see how much easier it can be to to build rapport with

people and to talk with them. But, yeah, it's, that's the

thing I love to to look at and and so and networking today.

What do you think about you know, we got so much away from

face to face networking, at least I did, because I've rarely

gone back to the face to face thing since, since the COVID

disaster, and I stay online, mostly doing it on LinkedIn, but

then having one to ones with people. What's your take on

that? Are people seeing that they need to be out there in

front of people? Or are they doing it online? Are they using

LinkedIn? Or all

of I think that the sphere of networking has

expanded. It used to be in person, and that was it was

starting to be more on LinkedIn prior to the pandemic. It

switched to online during the pandemic, and now that people

are able to get back together, people are craving the

opportunity to be in person with people. Yeah, somehow. Mono, so

I think there's a lot to be said for attending networking events,

because people want to be there and they want to meet with

people. They're craving that, that one on one interaction

with, you know, another human being, you know, just standing

in front of rather than just the computer. But in addition to

that, we've also layered on the LinkedIn and the virtual

connections as well. I mean, so it's like, it's like the

pandemic tripled our opportunities. That's right,

that's what I thought, too. Something that you

when you were talking about your clients practicing with the

their phone, it made me think of the the value today of voice

messaging as well as video messaging. It makes you stand

out from the crowd. Do you teach them? Do you teach your people

to do that as well?

Yeah, absolutely. I use, there's a lot of

platforms out there. I use loom. I don't have any paper

promotional for them. It's just, it's just what I learned on and

I like it, and it's easy, and it's one of the few platforms

that I do pay for, because I do like having that option to have

as many videos as I want. And I create loom videos all the time

for training purposes, Okay, number one, to provide people

with how to do things. And then I do also use it as for sales

purpose to and I train salespeople on how to use it for

sales purpose, so people can show what they want to share

about with a prospect. As opposed to just leaving a

voicemail message, they're actually having their face

there. They're having visual for people to look at. It's really

powerful.

Is it easier than doing it than not just doing it

on Zoom? Like is significantly easier. Okay, I've used it once

or twice, but I've never really looked into it. So maybe because

I I know sometimes I'll say to a client who I've just brought on

to send out cards, I want you to be aware of the back of the

card, blah, blah, blah, and do this, I'll send you a short

video just to keep to show you what I mean, and I've destined

it on Zoom, but, oh,

I would do that on loom, because you're using

their their platform as the basis point. And it's wonderful

because you can use it on your phone. You can if you're what I

find is fascinating. So for people who are in a

manufacturing setting, and many of my clients are manufacturing

settings, so you're sitting there and you're with a client,

and the client is saying it's making this weird noise. You

know, manufacturers like, there's no way it can make that

weird noise. It's just not physically possible, right? So

you pull out the loom video, you show the client there, you start

the button, you show the client, and you have the video. They see

the part running and all this stuff, and then the weird noise

happens, right? And then you send it, and they're like,

oh, oh.

And there it is. And it just, it just stops it.

And one of the things that loom says is their little branding

thing, their marketing thing, they do, we just saved you a

meeting. You know, they really do, because I have a virtual

assistant who works out of the Philippines, so we're on

different time. Schedules. So from one o'clock on my time, I'm

separate from him, and if I have things and I work until 10

o'clock at night, because my husband works second shift, so

that works for me. So I'll go through and I'll create a bunch

of work for him. I'll do it on loom, I'll show him everything,

and I'll send it to him, and he'll when he gets in and when

he starts his shift, he just looks at everything, and it

reports back to me that he's looked at it, so I know he's

engaged.

And boom, okay, that's good.

It's really exciting, because you can

actually see what's happening. And when you use it for sales,

let's say I want to sell you email marketing. Jenna, so I go

through and I do this little presentation. It's like a three

or four slide thing on PowerPoint, and I have my little

face there, and I'm talking, and I have all this wonderful stuff

happening, right? And I take this video and I send it to you,

I see when you opened it, and I can see time you spent on it,

yeah, I know when that happened, and so I need to follow up with

you later that day or the following day. Yeah, that's

beautiful. Or if you haven't opened it, maybe the video, the

email didn't go through, yes? So I can say, Gosh, I'm not sure if

you got this email, you know, but I want to make sure you saw

this, you know, yeah.

Oh, that's awesome. Those all these little

tricks, right? Using technology

to make our lives easier, that's my mantra.

So okay, we've let me just ask you this quick

question. So if you set a meeting with somebody on a

Calendly or whatever calendar link that you use, does that

calendar link attach to your zoom or does because mine isn't

working properly. So

we have, so I have found a way to do that,

because, like you, I have a specific meeting code that I

use. You have your, you know, zoom with Janice meeting code,

and I have my specific meeting code that I use, and I have my

meeting set up in a very particular way so that I can use

it ongoing and it stays specific to that. So when I set up a

meeting, I have it set up in my Calendly, because I do use

Calendly, but that's what I'm missing. You can set it up with

any of the services, and even if you do it through Outlook or

Gmail or however you manage your email or your calendar, you can

set it up so that the calendar link goes through, and heart has

that templated information in there, so the person can just,

you know, and it'll come through. And you have to set it

up in a very particular very particular way. Again, I was

working with a client this morning, explaining how to do

this so that you can do informational interviews. And it

was information, and I said this, and I showed him my

screen. I said, Here it is. Take a screenshot so you can set up

yours the same way. Because if you set this up correctly, and

you do it one and done, then you don't have to think about it

again exactly. It just makes your life so much easier.

There's no fretting, there's no worrying. There's no did they

have the right thing? And especially when it comes to

these, you know, teams, or zoom, or any of these platforms, as

soon as you you know, you have to think about it. Can my 95

year old, you know, grandmother, yeah, get on a meeting with me

if the answer is no, because it's a weird password that you

have to hit Shift to get to the, you know, the ampersand or

whatever. I mean, it's like, no, we have to make it as easy as

possible because it's so hard to sell. Yeah, we have to make it

as easy as possible and let tech make it easy for us to be

accessible.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We'll have to talk

about that offline, because I think it's one little thing I'm

missing. That's what I think it is. And I know that you're a wiz

with chat GPT. You love using that tool, and that has saved

you a lot of time and hard. It made me a lot of money. Yeah,

really, yeah. Okay. What's the three top things you do with it.

I have the paid version. Yes, so do i for $20 a

month right now, and November 24 that's how much it costs the and

the reason I do that is I have, do not have unlimited bandwidth

to do to do chats. I do not have that because nothing has that

that I'm aware of, but I have more options than somebody who's

on the free program, so it allows me more opportunity to do

more. I'm also able, with a paid version to create what's called

the custom GPT. Because I do marketing, I set up LinkedIn

posts, blog posts, website content pages, refreshes,

LinkedIn profile. I have certain things that are already set up.

So all I need to do is put in just two or three pieces of

information and it'll spit out what I need in a close

representation. Because it gets not, you know, 80 90% of the way

there. You have to check it and, you know, make it right, but it

gets you most of the way there. And so I have the paid version

so I can have more opportunity to use it more often without

being stopped. Two to be able to create the custom gpts, which

already has the information parameters in there. It already

has all the instructions in there, and then. So those are

the, you know, yeah, those two things because I just use it all

the time. So you asked to go to the top. Things. The third thing

that I would suggest is continuously learning how to use

it. Most people think, Oh, I'm just going to use it to write an

email. It's like, oh, did you know that you could take this

brochure, attach it to the chat, even on the free version, you

can, you know, attach it brochure and say, Please create

a presentation for me, a written presentation to send to a client

regarding this product. This is their situation. And it'll,

poof. It'll bring out an entire proposal for you. Wow. Number

one, I know it's pretty amazing. It will create PowerPoints for

you. It will create, it will literally create Word documents

and excel sheets. It will actually output to those

documents. There are so many different ways, if you can think

about I've had it create, I've had it plan trips for me. I just

came back from a trip to Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska to go see the

northern lights, and it was fabulous. And it literally found

the place that we stayed at. I wouldn't have sounded otherwise,

you know. So it was really interesting. So the how it can

be used. So what I do is I consistently keep up, either on

YouTube or through articles that I see online, of the new

features, and I listen, and I join peer groups where I can

listen and see how are people using this technology. I'm of a

mind, and I'm old enough to remember when cell phones were

the size of a shoe box, yeah, back in the early 90s, and they

went really small, and now they're larger again, thank God

so I can read the screen, yeah. And what happens is, is that I

think chat GBT is the shoe box cell phone right now, and it

will transition and shift and change as we go. So I need to be

able to transition, shift and change along with it, and need

to learn how to use it every time I think I don't know if

chat GP can do it, I just throw it in interesting that's the

question, just to see why not. Well?

And that's another example of always

learning and lifelong learning and being ahead of the game and

ahead of your clients, right? This is so much fun. So I'm just

going to shift a little bit before we wrap up, because I

know that you just started doing Wordle, and I've been doing it

for a long time, and I got stumped on it today, and I was

so mad. So do you do it every day?

Not every day? I'd say four out of seven days

of the week. Okay, so every

morning, when having my cup of tea, usually,

usually every day, I'll do Wordle, and then I do two of the

puzzles in LinkedIn. I do this, I forget the names, pinpoint,

and I do the other one, the cross climb. And I do those

every day, and it only takes me maybe 10 minutes, max at you

know, to do them. But I just, I love the the challenge, and I

love to do puzzles anyway. Now I think I'm going to start doing

Spelling Bee, but that takes longer, and that's a New York

Times one as well. And because I'm a word person and crosswords

at night, so it's fun to see that you're doing them so on.

Have you ever done any of the LinkedIn games?

No, I've actually turned off the opportunity. I

mean, I turned off the notifications to do that because

I don't do games. I mean, I do games. What do I do? Spider,

which is a version of solitaire. I do that. Oh yeah, I do the

I've started doing the Wordle. But it's what's interesting for

me about the Wordle is that I need to actually not be

listening to a book, or I have to actually think about it. And

sometimes I have to pull out a piece of paper and write the

words, which is trying to figure

that's funny. Well, the thing that I like

about, and I've only done it a couple of times, but the thing

that I like about the word games that LinkedIn has brought in is

you can actually use it as another networking tool, because

it shows you who of your connections has done the puzzle.

Wow. So you can ask more interesting now, yeah, so you

can see who's you know, doing like you, and you can reach out

to them if you want. So that's kind of fun and different. Okay,

last question, and I'm sure you'll have an answer for this.

So curiosity is my favorite word, and I love to ask

occasionally two things. One, it's two. Part question. One, do

you think curiosity is innate or learned. And part two, what are

you most curious about today? And you don't have to overthink

it, because there's no

writing or learned. I'm going to say it's

5050, it's nature, nurture, right? Yeah. And I think that if

somebody, somebody either has natural curiosity and they

pursue things just as a general rule. But I also do think that

if you start young or start somebody at any age, quite

frankly, on the path of how to be more curious about things,

and the benefits of that and what happens as a result of

being more curious, I. I think it could be very much a learned

item. And I think that's what I try to teach people when I work

with them in the sales training, is how to be curious. How do you

be curious about how to do things differently, right? Yes.

And then, what am I curious about today? I am. I'm curious

about, literally, like you're asking me, and I'm telling an

answer. I'm curious about 2025, because I'm starting to think

now, because it's, you know, in the middle of November, to how

to, how to plan my year. You know, I you and I have talked

about a a program that I'm putting together to reach out to

reach out to my clients monthly. I'm going to be using the Send

Out Cards that you talk about to reach my clients as well with

that. And I'm curious to see how that program comes together,

because I think it'll be really impactful to my business. But I

haven't yet fully formulated that, so it's always in the back

of my mind of, how am I going to put this together?

Well, just know that I'm happy to have that

conversation with you and brainstorm with you about it. I

appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm actually talking to a

guy tomorrow. This is kind of fun. Um, this person was

introduced to me by a podcast company because they send me

people all the time, and he to be on my podcast, and I always

have an intro call with them first. So we had this intro

call. He was great. I said, Let's do it. We're and I've

booked him to be on my podcast. But we started talking about one

of his companies, and I think he owns, he's a he's a coach, a

business coach, but he also has this carpet cleaning company,

and I asked him how he you know what? Anyway, I got into

conversation with him, and I gave him a couple ideas, and he

said, Oh, you and I need to brainstorm some more. I love

that. And I sent him a card, and now we're going to talk about

the cards in a brainstorming session tomorrow. So wonderful.

Yeah, that's kind of fun. So I love doing that. So if you're

when you're ready, let me know and and thank you so much for

being on on my podcast. I so enjoyed having you as my guest,

and I appreciate your expertise and in more ways than you, than

you know. So thank you, Janice, so much for having me here. Oh,

you're so welcome. Quite fun to have this conversation.

Actually, know what I'm really looking forward to you. I know

you love to travel, and you're coming up my way next summer,

and we're actually going to meet in person. So that's really

exciting. And

that's another thing that I do when it comes to

networking, is I let people know where I'm traveling. And you'd

be surprised at how many people know people or are certain

places. And I try to make that connection. I try to, generally,

everywhere I go, in the United States, I try, or the world,

literally, I try to make a connection.

Did you do that in Alaska?

Oh no, because we're nowhere. Yeah,

okay, okay, there's nobody around, okay, but

you had a good time, and you saw the Northern Lights, right? It

was fabulous. Oh, fantastic. All right. Well, thank you again for

being here, and thank you to my audience for being here, please

let us know that you enjoyed the podcast, and Karen will put in

the show notes where people can find you. Yes, perfect. And all

right, and thanks again, and remember to stay connected and

be remembered. You.