Shownotes
Episode 204 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D)
LinkedIn lead generation gets easier when you stop chasing connections and start becoming the person trusted contacts want to introduce.
Episode Summary
LinkedIn lead generation is far more effective when it is built on trust, clarity, and referrals instead of connection counts and vanity metrics. In this episode of Business Superfans® Advantage, Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) sits down with Daniel Alfon to unpack what actually makes LinkedIn work for service entrepreneurs and SMBs.
LinkedIn lead generation works best when you optimize your profile for the right reader, make the next step obvious, and build referral-ready relationships instead of chasing volume. Daniel Alfon explains that the goal is not to be the most connected person on LinkedIn, but the best connected: trusted, memorable, and easy to introduce.
Definitive authority statement: LinkedIn becomes a revenue channel only when your profile, your relationships, and your follow-up are aligned to earn trusted introductions.
Daniel Alfon is a longtime LinkedIn strategist, trainer, and author of Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. Active on LinkedIn since 2004, he shares how the platform helped him shorten sales cycles, build warm introductions, and create revenue without relying on cold outreach, paid ads, or a premium account.
This episode tackles common pain points: incomplete profiles, unclear positioning, weak follow-up, overreliance on AI-generated content, and the mistake of treating LinkedIn like a popularity platform instead of a business asset. Daniel and Freddy D show how to make your profile more customer-centric, how to choose the right featured link, why warm leads outperform cold prospects, and how simple relationship nurture can create compounding growth.
Key discoveries in this episode:
- Best connected beats most connected
- Profiles should guide one clear next action
- Warm referrals are less price-sensitive
- Thoughtful follow-up reactivates opportunity
- AI works best when your voice stays human
This conversation is for service entrepreneurs and SMBs, consultants, coaches, trades, professional service firms, and business owners who want more qualified conversations from LinkedIn without acting fake or sounding automated.
What makes LinkedIn lead generation work without cold messaging? Daniel explains that it starts with knowing your ideal reader and making your profile useful to that person.
How often should you revisit your LinkedIn profile? The episode suggests reviewing it regularly, especially when your offer, audience, or primary call to action changes.
Can AI help without making your content sound robotic? Yes. Use AI to improve clarity and efficiency, but keep your own judgment, stories, and personality in control.
Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) is a Revenue Architect helping service entrepreneurs and SMBs align marketing, sales, operations, financials, and ecosystem stakeholders to activate the R⁶ Reactor™, driving Recognition, Retention, Reputation, Reviews, Referrals, and Revenue through the 3 A's: Advocacy, AI + Systems, and Authority, building a self-sustaining, ecosystem-driven business that grows with or without you and creates true prosperity.
Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting:
Be the Authority | Don't Compete. Dominate
Key Takeaways
- Best connected beats most connected. Daniel’s core message is simple and powerful: network quality matters more than network size when referrals and trust are on the line.
- Your LinkedIn profile should serve one ideal reader. Whether that reader is a prospect or a hiring manager, the profile should answer their questions and move them toward action.
- The featured link matters. If your strongest business objective has changed, your profile should reflect it quickly and clearly.
- Warm leads convert better. Referred prospects are usually less price-sensitive and more open to meaningful conversations than cold contacts.
- Nurture existing relationships before chasing new ones. Birthday outreach, thoughtful follow-up, and simple check-ins can reactivate trust and reopen opportunity.
- Ignore vanity metrics. Impressions, followers, and connection counts matter far less than discovery calls, clients won, and revenue created.
- Use AI as an assistant, not a replacement. Daniel encourages entrepreneurs to use AI to improve content, while keeping their real voice, judgment, and personality intact.
- This aligns directly with the R⁶ Reactor™. Better relationships improve Recognition, strengthen Retention, lift Reputation, increase Referrals, and ultimately grow Revenue.
- Advocacy is the real LinkedIn advantage. When trusted people speak well of you, the first “A” in the 3 A’s—Advocacy—starts doing the heavy lifting for your growth.
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Guest Bio:
Daniel Alfon is a LinkedIn strategist, trainer, and author of Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. Active on LinkedIn since 2004, he has trained thousands of professionals and developed a practical, authentic approach to generating leads and revenue without cold outreach, paid ads, or pretending to be someone you are not. His work is especially relevant for service entrepreneurs and SMBs that want referral-driven growth.
Freddy D’s Take
Daniel Alfon brings a grounded, experience-based perspective to LinkedIn lead generation that cuts through platform noise. What stands out most is his insistence that LinkedIn should not be treated like a scoreboard. It should be treated like a relationship asset that supports real business outcomes.
This conversation fits squarely into what Frederick Dudek teaches on Business Superfans® Advantage: sustainable growth happens when trust compounds across your ecosystem. Daniel’s emphasis on mutual connections, thoughtful follow-up, better profile conversion, and warm introductions reinforces the reality that Advocacy is often the fastest path to growth. When paired with AI + Systems to maintain consistent communication, that trust can expand into long-term Authority.
Definitive authority statement: LinkedIn becomes a true revenue channel when service entrepreneurs align profile clarity, relationship nurture, and referral trust around one clear business outcome.
For service entrepreneurs and SMBs, this episode is a reminder that better growth rarely starts with more noise. It starts with better positioning, stronger follow-up, and a business ecosystem that knows how to talk about you when you are not in the room.
Complete positioning statement: Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) is a Revenue Architect helping service entrepreneurs and SMBs align marketing, sales, operations, financials, and ecosystem stakeholders to activate the R⁶ Reactor™, driving Recognition, Retention, Reputation, Reviews, Referrals, and Revenue through the 3 A's: Advocacy, AI + Systems, and Authority, building a self-sustaining, ecosystem-driven business that grows with or without you and creates true prosperity.
The Action:
The Action: Audit your LinkedIn profile around one ideal reader and one desired next step.
Who: Business owners, founders, and marketing-facing stakeholders in service businesses.
Why: This sharpens your message, improves Recognition, and makes referrals easier because people can immediately understand who you help and what they should do next. It also supports the R⁶ Reactor™ by making trust easier to convert into conversations and revenue.
How:
- Identify your single most important ideal reader.
- Define the one action you want that person to take after visiting your profile.
- Rewrite your headline to speak to that reader’s problem or desired outcome.
- Move your strongest link or offer into the most visible profile placement.
- Ask three trusted contacts to review your profile and tell you what feels clear, confusing, or compelling.
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Guest Contact
Daniel Alfon is a LinkedIn strategist, trainer, and author of Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. Active on LinkedIn since 2004, he has trained thousands of professionals and developed a practical, authentic approach to generating leads and revenue without cold outreach, paid ads, or pretending to be someone you are not. His work is especially relevant for service entrepreneurs and SMBs that want referral-driven growth.
Resources & Tools
Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success — Daniel Alfon’s book on creating a stronger LinkedIn presence; foundational ideas remain useful even though LinkedIn has evolved.
Headline Cheat Sheet — Daniel’s free resource to help entrepreneurs improve their LinkedIn headline.
Daniel Alfon One-on-One Session — Book directly through his website and mention the Business Superfans® Advantage episode.
LinkedIn Notifications Tab — A simple but overlooked way to spot birthdays and relationship touchpoints.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- PodMatch
- Authority Vanguard
This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.
Copyright 2025 Prosperous Ventures, LLC
Mentioned in this episode:
Ninja Prospecting
We help coaches, consultants, and service-based business owners start real conversations with their ideal prospects on LinkedIn… Without sounding like a sales robot. We focus on building relationships and adding value first. Our method leaves a positive impression – so even if the timing isn’t right now, the door stays open for future conversations. Think of it this way: You wouldn’t walk into a networking event and pitch someone before saying hello. So why would you do that online?
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcripts
Most people think they need to have a large network, but it's not the number of connections you have, it's what they say about you.
Intro:But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast.
We will discuss how establishing business Superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence. World of Commerce.
This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddy D. Freddy, Freddy.
Freddy D:Hey, super fans.
ers. Active on LinkedIn since:LinkedIn is incredibly powerful yet wildly misunderstood. And most people are doing what's popular instead of what's smart.
After training thousands of professionals, Daniel developed a simple, authentic method to generate leads and revenue without cold contacting paid ads, premium accounts, or pretending to be someone you're not.
If you're a 40 entrepreneur who wants LinkedIn to actually work for you and your business, this conversation will change how you think about networking and growth.
Freddy D:Welcome, Daniel, to Business Superfans Advantage. Great conversation we had before we started recording. You're all the way from Israel, Tel Aviv area. I'm all the way in Arizona, the Scottsdale area.
Welcome to the show.
Daniel Alfon:Thank you very much, Freddie, for having me on the Business Superfans Advantage.
Freddy D: u started getting involved in: I mean, I learned about it in:And so it's come a long way as a business tool, but I don't think people are leveraging it efficiently as a tool and that's where your expertise comes in. So tell us a little bit about how that all got started. What's the backstory that got you into kind of the LinkedIn business pleasure?
Daniel Alfon:It starts with a person I trusted and they sent me an invitation and I said, if that serious person is on that thing, I didn't know even what it was, then I need to check it out. And two years later I was a quota carrying salesperson and LinkedIn helped me slash my sales cycle by 30%. And that was my aha moment.
And I started to see what's under the hood and then started helping friends. They wanted me to train their salesforce. And one day you wake up and you say, let's specialize and let's drop everything else.
And LinkedIn has over 1 billion and 400 million users. And since we started this chat on the business Superfunds Advantage, hundreds of people have signed up. Every second. Three people sign up.
Freddy D:That's crazy.
And back when I was selling the manufacturing software, engineering and manufacturing software, like we had mentioned before we started recording, we didn't have any tools like LinkedIn and all that stuff.
It was, you bought the directory, which you paid three to five hundred dollars and then they had SIC codes and you looked for your SIC code of your market and then you had pages of companies and then you had to manually write that down or manually take it from the book and type it into some form, form of CRM before you could do anything with it. So things have dramatically changed over the last several decades.
Daniel Alfon:They have. And trade shows are less important than they used to be for service providers. And we need to act differently.
Freddy D:So tell us a little bit about how do you coach people to improve their LinkedIn profile and then how to leverage that for business growth? As you mentioned earlier, that helped you slash a significant amount of prospecting time and grew your sales tremendously by leveraging LinkedIn.
I don't think people, especially in a service based business, do spend the time to leverage.
Daniel Alfon:That goes back to the very concept of superfans. Most people think they need to have a large network, but it's not the number of connections you have, it's what they say about you.
And the simplest question I would ask the audience is if you had to pick one, Freddie, in three years time, would you rather be the most connected or the best connected?
Freddy D:Oh, the best connected for sure.
Daniel Alfon:The best connected means that when I look up your profile, LinkedIn will show me names of our mutual connections, which are Alexand Filippo, co founder of PodMatch, and Vora Lensky.
If I needed to reach out to you, I feel comfortable reaching out to Alex or to Drora and say, I'd like to have a conversation with Freddy D. Do you think you know him well enough? Do you feel comfortable enough to make the introduction?
And if they make the introduction, we can have a meaningful conversation thanks to their name.
My name doesn't mean anything to you at that point, but someone who would say Freddie, Daniel, I think you two should speak can help us tremendously grow. And referrals is A very big source of revenues for service providers.
Freddy D:And how do you really kind of build that profile?
Because I think a lot of people put stuff up there and I know that I've gone through numerous iterations of my description and trying to make it SEO friendly and blah, blah, blah, and now you use AI to try to do it. And it's still, in my mind, not the best.
Daniel Alfon:It's a work in progress. But the questions I would ask is one, who's your ideal reader?
And two, what action would you like Freddie, that person to perform once they visit your profile? And for most service providers, it would be visit a certain website.
So let's make sure that this link, the best link we want to show people, is prominent and featured. And let's try to help them see the right information at the right time, helping them to understand that we are part of the solution.
It may take them hours. They may want to check you outside of LinkedIn, but we have to grow the funnel and move as soon as possible out of LinkedIn into real life.
Freddy D:Interesting point. I'll just use my profile. I don't have the prominent link up front and center. It's closer down to the bottom.
And you just made me think of something that I need to improve and move that up.
Daniel Alfon:Some service providers think it's best to actually revisit our profile, say every quarter, just to maybe add another term and stuff like that.
And maybe once a year read it from A to Z and decide, do I want people to go to school.com eprosperity hub would I rather they go to frederickdudek.com would I want them to schedule a meeting or do something else? And when we prove it, it's very easy for us to make our profile show the right direction to the right people.
Freddy D:So how do you work with somebody that says, okay, Daniel, I'd like to improve my profile on LinkedIn? I have no clue what I'm doing. I've got stuff up there.
I've always been an employee and now I'm kind of transitioning to having my own little bit of a business because the profile is completely different. If you're working for a company, then you are running a business.
Daniel Alfon:It is. But the discussion I would have is not about LinkedIn at all. Consider LinkedIn as a black box that needs to serve your business.
So I would ask you questions about your business, about your ideal clients, about the way you want to reach those people. And only once we determine that, then we'll look at your profile because the profile could Be revamped in an hour.
But it makes sense to understand who the ideal reader is.
Freddy D:Okay, so let's go through that a little bit of an exercise so that we get some benefit for our listeners and at the same time positions you as an expert in that area.
Daniel Alfon:Who would be the ideal reader for you today?
Freddy D:Today would be a service business. Whether it's professional or trade, the fundamentals are still the fundamentals in business.
So someone that's having challenges where their business is plateau got some turn of employees because it's competitive market out there. They've ghosted their customers because most service businesses, and I'm not putting anybody down, but this is reality.
You've done a great job, you've taken care of the customer, they're super happy. You never reach back out to them again. I just share the story of when I got divorced.
In over a decade plus ago, I had two realtors that were professional service people helping me sell my house. It worked out because my ex wife didn't like one of the realtors and liked the other one. So we got it done.
Once the house was sold, I moved it into an apartment temporarily until everything was settled and a divorce was done and everything else. I never heard from those realtors ever again. And a year was up with my lease.
I was ready to buy a house because everything was settled and everything else. I ended up finding a different realtor and then I ended up buying an investment house on top of it. And so they lost out on two opportunities.
Not because they didn't even say hey Freddie, it's been six months, how's things going? Are you thinking of staying in an apartment? You're looking at a house. Nothing crickets. So I'm not a super fan of those two.
And more importantly, that goes back to what I was saying earlier, that a lot of times you've done a great job with that customer and they love you for what you did. But then you ghost them. You don't put them on a newsletter.
You don't reach out and say happy birthday or it's been one year anniversary since we worked together. Just reaching out and saying hi.
And those are ideal people that I can help transform the growth engine that's staring them right in the face that they haven't realized is there.
Daniel Alfon:You're absolutely right and it's a pity you need to reach out to someone from your networking group instead of nurturing you. We don't have to attract new clients. We need to start serving the ones we've worked with and birthday is a great opportunity.
I know you use a system to send cards, physical cards. I won't have time for that because your birthday is coming up on Monday. Yep.
But I'll try to send you an email at least and ask how you've been and the opportunity. LinkedIn shows us the people who have their birthday. If we visit our notification tab, either ignore it, Freddie, or send the cookie cutter.
Happy birthday. By the end of the day, you received 449. You're not looking forward to the next one. So invest 60 seconds, look at what that person has shared.
Go back to your email, look for that email, see the threads or the conversations you had in the past.
Reply to one of those emails and try to help that person, either by recommending someone they need to speak with, or maybe a resource, a meetup, a podcast, and ask them a question. And 99% of people will not do that because they don't have time to invest in that relationship.
If you don't have 60 seconds to invest in that relationship, maybe you too don't have to be connected on LinkedIn, right?
Freddy D:No, you bring up an important point, because it's really all about building those relationships.
And just two years ago, actually going on three years now, because I scaled the language services company by about a million dollars, and it's documented.
And that's one of the things that we did, was we started reaching out to all of our contractors that were the language, you know, specialists, and recognizing them and communicating with them. We stayed in contact with our customers.
I landed a large government agency in the healthcare space, and every month we would have a scheduled meeting to just see what was going on, any issues and everything like that. Then we'd spend 5 minutes on business and 10 minutes BSing about what vacation you were thinking of.
She was thinking of going on where I was going on, what was going on in her life, what restaurants they went to and all that stuff. And she was a super fan of me when I was selling into other government agencies for that company, she was referenceable and I would name drop.
And you get to a point where you've got a certain name and people don't question it, because if you're talking to that person, then you're okay in my book. And you've collapsed that whole sales cycle dramatically.
Daniel Alfon:You're absolutely right. Because people who are referred to us are warm leads. They're less price sensitive, and they often end up becoming superfans themselves.
We have to service them. We have to maintain the highest quality possible.
But it's A lot easier than knocking on people's doors and say, don't know what I do, but here's the solution to your problem. Grow your existing superfans, even if you have one. A single person is responsible for over 80% of my revenues in the last decade.
Wow, it's even too much. It's risky. I need to diversify. But you don't say no to that because they help people qualify and disqualify the prospect.
If they think you're not a good match, they will not be a referral partner. And if they meet someone who could be a good client for you, they will do everything they can to help you start a conversation with that person.
Freddy D:Oh, sure.
I mean, I owned a digital marketing agency and I don't own it anymore, but I still have a handful of customers from those days that strictly want to work with me. And we're talking 10 plus years relationships.
Because I do send them birthday cards, I reach out to them, I send them holiday cards, I send them around Thanksgiving. You flip the words around for us, but I look at it as giving thanks when you flip it around.
And so that's when I reach out to my past customers or people that I'm afraid of, associate with and express gratitude for them and et cetera. And that's how you nurture that.
And another example that I want to emphasize that you talked about with that one individual that's become a major resource, there's a video on YouTube that I saw years ago. It's a masterclass attraction marketing. And it's a concert and there's a guy by himself. You may have seen this dancing on the hill like an idiot.
And everybody's looking at this guy like an idiot and he's dancing all by himself and people are laying down and are watching. And finally someone dances a little bit with him, but they leave and he's still standing by himself. Finally he gets one person.
Now two of them are dancing by themselves, looking crazy. And people are still laying on the carpets and on the side of the hill watching it.
All of a sudden four people come and they start joining and then two more start coming and then a couple more coming. And then people that were sitting on the grass, they get up and they run into it. And before everybody's running into the party where the action is.
And that's because that guy created super fans of one person that attracted more and that momentum took off.
And that's what you're really talking about with having your guy that you've had for over A decade who's a super fan of you, and he's created that momentum that has built your business over the last decade.
Daniel Alfon:I love the story in the video. And then what he really created is one super fan, one super fan can grow our business tremendously.
And funny thing is that some clients of mine, I had a conversation with them maybe five or seven years ago, and I didn't think I was a good fit. They were at the stage where I could not help them, so I referred them to someone else.
And five years down the road, they came to me because they were ready now for what I could offer them. I had no idea they would even remember me.
But instead of trying to grab every piece of business that's possible under the sun, we need to focus on the super funds we can serve, and we'll sleep better, we'll have better revenues, we'll have better profits and better margins. We don't have to serve them all.
Freddy D:Very important point, because when you are dealing with the ideal customer, your icp, your ideal customer profile, your messaging resonates with them automatically, and they're going to resonate with your messaging.
So you're collapsing that whole aspect of it, and now you've got someone that is interested in what you're offering versus you trying to push something into them that may or may not be what they're looking for.
And unfortunately, a lot of salespeople thinking about, I got to meet quota and I got to make the sale and if they would flip that script a little bit and how can I help people, and maybe my solution's not the.
Freddy D:Right one, and it's okay for me.
Freddy D:To recommend someone else's product because that gives me integrity. And it also gives me the fact that I'm a knowledgeable and I'm a resource, and. And you can't put a value on that.
Daniel Alfon:A question we could ask someone we meet someone new is who would be a good referral for you.
And by shifting the emphasis, instead of what we are interested into that person and asking them that question, what will happen is that you will tell me something about your ideal client, and I will not need to scout or look for those people because maybe two weeks down the road I'll meet someone and then I'll say, I think you need to speak with Freddy D. Simply because you told me the service provider is your ICP and you've got that label in my mind. And at one point, I will find a service provider and I will wonder if you could speak with that person.
So ask what sort of referrals are you looking for and who would be a good referral or good introduction for you and your mind will start working.
Freddy D:Very good points, Daniel. Let's go back to the book a bit and tell me how did the book come about, what's the book about and why should somebody buy the book?
Daniel Alfon: My book was published in:I think I visited Amazon and there was a pop up saying, are you an author? Click here. And then in two clicks I could upload, upload a file. So I said, okay, how much time will it take me to write a book? Maybe three weeks.
And lo and behold, two years later I had the book. And it was 12 steps into building a killer profile.
The essence has not changed, but the pace and the rhythm of changes within LinkedIn is tremendously increased.
Freddy D:So let's go into maybe a little bit of those steps in building a profile because I think a lot of people don't really understand that. So let's help them at least re review their profile.
Daniel Alfon:We'll start with the banner. The banner is a visual element that can have either a slogan or photo, just like your profile has.
Some service provider would like to put their logo here or something else. Then it's very important to have a decent professional looking profile photo.
People without a photo get up to 24 less clicks than people with a visible profile photo. Because if we look at someone and we don't see a photo, we assume the profile is not up to date.
So first thing, make sure we've got a professional looking photo and upload a banner. Everything we'll mention is free. It takes literally less than five minutes.
Freddy D:Now let me ask a question. On the banner I put a rainbow which was from a ship looking at the Moorea island in Tahiti.
And so I thought the rainbow is, hey, you're in a rainy situation, I'll help you transform into a sunshine. Life is good. That was my idea behind it.
But should I put a logo in there and all that stuff for a message or should I just make it a different business header or does it really matter?
Daniel Alfon:It doesn't matter that much. No one will dislike the photo. The photo is beautiful, the rainbow is visible.
I'm not sure everyone will translate the photo into the idea you had in mind, but that's fine. What we could do is ask ourselves three simple questions. Are you happy with the photo, the rainbow photo. Do you like it?
Freddy D:I'd like it, yeah. I should probably put a message and that would probably go from there. Okay.
Daniel Alfon:And the second question, people who know you well, when they see that photo, do they say, yes, that is Freddie all over. That's his style. That resonates with him, or would they stop and say, what did he think using that? And the third and last question.
Are the service provider you're interested in? Does that compel them to learn more about you? Is it neutral or does it drive them away?
So ask yourself these three simple questions and then you will be able to understand whether the banner works for you or something else. And maybe the most important text in our profile is our headline. Because the headline is visible even without visiting your profile.
When we see a preview, we see this. So I would encourage our viewers and our listeners to check their headline.
And just like you did Freddie, by default, the headline would be the title. We have the name of our company.
No offense to Prosperity Pathway Consulting, but what you wrote here is much more customer centric than the name of your company. You help service based entrepreneurs align people, simplify systems and amplify profitability.
That makes me more curious about you than seeing the name of the company. So have a look at your profile headline.
If you're interested, I could share a giveaway, a freebie on my website, a cheat sheet helping entrepreneurs and service based entrepreneurs change or upgrade their headline. Next, you've got a link here and three links. Make sure they're up to date and scroll down. Look at your about section.
It's easy to read because you helped us with white spaces and line. Imagine if the text is dense, then my mind stops and say, Daniel, do you really want to read this? Whereas this is user friendly and I can read it.
The bullets are very helpful. And by this stage I said, okay, that's interesting. Let's learn. Featuring our best link will take us a minute.
I think it's very important and I'm going to turn it to you. Is this the strongest link you'd like people to visit?
Freddy D:No, I think the thing is getting them into Authority Vanguard about school, because that's where I can help people.
Podcast is cool, but now that you make me think about it, my real objective is how to get people into it so they can get resources to help get their business and potentially work together. But it costs them nothing to join Authority Vanguard on school.
Daniel Alfon:But so there's a way to downplay the podcast or share about the podcast and still feature the strongest link you'd like. And one simple thing to do is to ask someone to visit your profile and to tell you what their thoughts are. And that can help you tremendously.
Because sometimes we're thinking that our prospect know A, B and C. But if we people Freddie say what do you mean by X, Y or Z? Then it's not the responsibility, it's ours.
We need to go back to the drawing board and maybe simplify the language or use another term or make it simpler for them to understand that we are part of the solution to their problem.
Freddy D:Very well said. Because I didn't even think of the importance of that link.
I just put the podcast up there a while ago and I haven't changed it at all because never even thought.
Daniel Alfon:Of was good at the time.
But if you pivot and if you'd like to draw people somewhere else, it makes sense for you to treat LinkedIn as a website going back to the entrepreneur and not the employee. For the employee it makes sense to have their cv. So when did you work for that company?
But as entrepreneur or service based entrepreneurs, we want to consider LinkedIn as a website that needs to convert our ideal reader. It's less interesting for the clients you're going to work with to understand, but the way you can help them is more meaningful.
Can increase the chances of them being interested in checking you out.
Freddy D:I think that I would also work for an employee because they would want to share what they bring to the table that company by hiring their services. Because that's something I learned when I was working as an employee in the years before.
I would walk in on an interview with the 90 day plan already put together. I would always win the job because nobody came in prepared. I did my homework, I did everything else I laid out. Here's what I plan to do.
In the first 90 days, most people were like whoa.
And then we were talking about and tweaking and adjusting the plan and that was already the presumptive close that I had the job because we were already talking about tweaking the plan and that was something that I did. So what you're sharing is really the same kind of strategy.
Daniel Alfon:I love it.
It makes you stand out from the crowd and instead of waiting for question number 15 and at one point will fail, it makes the discussion that they can actually visualize you stepping into the employee's shoes and delivering what you want to do. So it's a great way to switch the conversations into something that's more interesting.
Freddy D:Yeah. Because now it becomes a collaborative conversation.
You're no longer the one on a hot seat that you're sweating and everything else because you don't know what the next question is going to be and all that stuff. Now you're much more in control of the whole conversation, right?
Daniel Alfon:We could actually switch the same questions we asked earlier. Who's the ideal reader? So if you're an employee, the ideal reader is your next hiring manager. That's it.
And as a service provider, usually the ideal reader is our prospect or our icp, like you mentioned, right?
Freddy D:And you need to be talking. Whether it's really an employee or a individual business owner, they need to be talking to the audience. And both of them have audiences.
They're just different audiences.
Daniel Alfon:We discussed the importance of the right metrics, so maybe we could dedicate a minute to this. Forget about the LinkedIn metrics and focus on the real life business metrics. This is the simplest tip I could suggest.
Don't fall in love with LinkedIn impressions followers connections SSI get back to the basics. Your bank account.
Imagine you have a discovery call, and before LinkedIn you only had one discovery call a week or two discovery calls a week and you could convert one of them into business. And by using LinkedIn you now have three discovery calls instead of two and you manage to convert two of those into paying clients.
So you have doubled your revenue because you've used LinkedIn in a certain way and you can gain a lot of money with very few connections. And you might have a gazillion connections without being able to translate them into revenues.
Would you rather have more revenues or more connections?
Freddy D:That's an obvious answer. Revenue, obviously. And let's get into it because we still have some time. How is AI coming into the LinkedIn conversation here?
Daniel Alfon:Like AI is entering every conversation fast and we don't know what to expect.
The ability to write perfect posts, something that used to take most people hours and some people would rather have a root canal and sharing something on LinkedIn now the funny thing is, because it's too perfect, we are less interested in reading some of that content. So showing our vulnerable side or talking about our failures in a genuine way can be perceived.
Us being humans and us having written that post and not just AI, you can use AI. AI is a great tool, but you should call the shots. Your favorite AI tool suggested A, B and C. Are you happy with A, B and C?
And if you say A and B, fine, but they don't like it. It's a mistake in my book to apply the third method just because AI suggested it. You have a real life personality.
You don't have to create another personality just for the sake of LinkedIn.
Freddy D:Very good point. Because I use AI a lot.
I've been using it for several years now, especially when I was with the language services company, but I used it to just improve my writing. That's really what I use AI the most for, is to improve what I've put together, clean up the grammar, make it look good. I used to use Grammarly.
I can just drop it into chat GPT. I've also written prompts for my podcast show that I can extract information from the transcription. I can provide a nice introduction of the guest.
I can take a nice outro, post the recording of the show where at the end kind of recap what the episode was all about. I use AI to help do that. And I still read it, tweak it and improve it. But yeah, I use it as a complement to what I'm doing.
Daniel Alfon:What made you interested in the concept of superfans initially?
Freddy D:Great question.
When I look back in my career in the CAD cam space that I was in for almost three decades was the fact that my customers were my sales team and I used to pre computers though I had a Mac that I used to carry around with me in the late 80s and 90s, but I would have a daytimer with all my customers and I put them all in the system. I wrote my own CRM back in 86 using a relational database called Helix on the Mac.
So it's very basic, but it kept me some notes and things like that on the customer and then later on used another CRM and I would print out all the companies in the address book on my daytime and I could take notes in the meeting. And somewhere along the line I knew that all my customers were referenceable.
They were all super fans of me because of the way I treated them, spent time with them and everything else.
So I got to the point where I was so bold, I'll use the word bold, but I would turn around and says, daniel, here's my daytimer, here's a list of our customers. Here's my phone. And I carried a brick phone back in the day. I drop it on the table and says, use my phone.
Pick any one of those customers, they're all referenceable. And I'd shut up. And people would take the page and flip through it and they go, oh, John, at so and so manufacturing is using your software.
Flip, flip. Oh, Dave is using the software. Okay, I've seen enough. Nobody would Call and take me up on the call.
But I would wrap up the deal because they saw who was already utilizing our technology, and that was my sales team.
Daniel Alfon:It's amazing to have that sales team that's motivated and they could do things that you would never dream of. Yeah, they would meet people. Never know.
Freddy D:Sure. I mean, they introduced me. I've shared this on the podcast many times. My fastest sale was 30 minutes for $60,000.
And that whole time was me on my Mac, sitting with the owner, putting together the order form because he said he got a call from one of my customers, my best customer, which referred me ton of business, and said, jack says, I need to get it. How much? How fast can you get it here? And so it was basically configuring the thing. And then I used his fax machine to fax the order into corporate.
It was wild. But that's when you've got those relationships.
And one of the times I've shared this as well before is the IT manager at the one company he was going through a divorce, and I came in for a meeting, and I was all dressed up and wearing a suit back in those days. And I could tell his demeanor was off. He just wasn't in the right place. And said, hey, Bob, what's going on?
He kind of says he got hit with divorce papers and said, okay, you know what? We're going to lunch. I'm buying a couple beers, and we're getting out of here, and we're talking about it.
And I sat there for a couple hours drinking a few beers with them at the restaurant. And I stopped being the business guy. I was the friend. And I think a lot of people forget that friend needs to be part of that conversation.
And when it was time to win a contest that was closing at the end of June, it was a $2,000 prize from the company. I called Bob and said, hey, I know that you talked about buying this workstation towards the end of the year. I got this contest deadline.
I need that sale. What can we do? He goes, well, what can you do for me? And I'll be happy to help you.
I says, well, top sales guy says, I can call and delay payment because you're top sales guy, you make the rules, kind of. And so I called accounting and said, hey, these guys want to buy a workstation.
Can we delay payment to the following year and book it at the end of the year, but I can get the P.O. Now. And I said, yeah, no problem. Called him back up, said, yeah, do it. Hour later, I Got the po.
I won the prize that paid for my wedding honeymoon with my ex wife. We toured Europe for a couple weeks on the company's money.
Daniel Alfon:Amazing. And you mentioned that you stopped being the business person and you started being Bob's friend, but you were being yourself. You have than one hat.
It could be a businessman, it could be a friend. And they're not mutually exclusive.
Freddy D:Yeah, they're intertwined, right?
Freddy D:Yeah.
Daniel Alfon:What would you suggest to someone starting up as a service provider with less experience?
Freddy D:Let's say I've had some remodeling done on my home. Okay, simple example.
We've all had some service, come out to the house, fix something, stay in contact with that customer, reach out six months later and say, hey, how are you doing? How's that project doing? You know, if it's a kitchen remodel, we all know that everybody hangs out in the kitchen internationally.
The party's always in the kitchen. So how's the kitchen holding up in the parties? How many parties have you thrown there? One year reminder and birthday.
Reaching out to their birthday, the anniversary of when you did the work. There's a multitude of different ways that you can maintain relationships with those customers. This doesn't really cost you a lot of money.
And the other thing that a lot of people overlook is people give out swag.
Okay, so if I got a coffee cup, that's nice, but if I put your name on it, now it's your coffee cup because nobody cares about this, but this makes it, oh, don't touch my coffee cup because it's now my coffee cup. But now what you've done is you've created a super fan.
It's out there promoting your business with their coffee cup or their shirt that's got their name on it as part of you. So there's a lot of things that you can do to create those super fans for your business.
Whether you're a law firm, an accounting firm, HR company, a landscaping company, a house remodeler, plumber, electrician, whatever, it all works the same.
Daniel Alfon:You very much.
Freddy D:Thank you.
So as we kind of come to the end here, Daniel, how can people find you and learn a little bit more about what you offer and your services and things like that?
Daniel Alfon:Thank you very much. All they had to do is go to danielalphon.com that's Daniel a L, F O N. And there's the cheat sheet that can help them improve their headline.
And they can book a one on one and just say, I've heard your episode with Freddy D on the Business Superfans Advantage.
Freddy D:Great conversation, Daniel. You and I could spend a few hours on this, I think. Love to have you on the show down the road.
Daniel Alfon:Cheers. Thank you very much, Freddy.
Freddy D:What really stood out in today's conversation with Daniel is this powerful reminder. It's not about being the most connected, it's about being the best connected.
Daniel showed us how LinkedIn isn't just a social platform or an online resume, it's a relationship engine. When used intentionally for service based business owners, this matters more than ever.
Growth doesn't come from chasing vanity metrics like followers or impressions. It comes from nurturing real relationships, building trust, and turning satisfied clients into active referral partners.
One strong connection, one true superfan can outperform hundreds of cold prospects. That's exactly why conversations like this reinforce what we talk about all the time here on Business Superfans.
Sustainable growth happens when you stop selling at people and start serving with purpose, and Daniel's insights give you a practical roadmap to do just that. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes.
I'm grateful you're part of the Business Superfans movement. Every listen and every action brings you closer to building your own superfans. Be sure to subscribe to the show.
We've got another great guest coming up focusing on what really moves the needle.
Freddy D:I'll talk to you on the next episode. Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan.
Freddy D:Closer to Lasting prosperity.
Intro:We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.
