Shownotes
Since 2009, CommonSenseHealth.org has been helping clients to establish an online presence, grow their business, and increase sales using social media and online marketing. Founder and CEO Kim Peterson-Stone was already creating a community prior to the ability to do it online. When the power of that gained momentum, she used that as a perfect segue to build the new enterprise. She has since built a network of 180,000 plus highly engaged subscribers and fans for herself and hundreds of thousands more for clients. She speaks, consults, and trains on inspired leadership and how to build quality business relationships and acquire new clients through LinkedIn and social media.
Kim Peterson-Stone, CEO CommonSenseHealth.org – Helping Clients Grow Their Business And Increase Sales Using Social Media And Online Marketing
We’re fortunate to have as our guest Kim Peterson-Stone. She’s the Founder and CEO of CommonSenseHealth.org. Since 2009, CommonSenseHealth.org has been helping clients to establish an online presence and grow their business and increase sales using social media and online marketing. Kim has built a network of 180,000 plus highly engaged subscribers and fans for herself and hundreds of thousands more for clients. She speaks, consults, and trains on inspired leadership and how to build quality business relationships and acquire new clients through LinkedIn and social media. Kim, welcome to the show.
I’m glad to be here, Bob. Thanks so much for having me.
Kim, tell us a little bit about how you got started.
Actually, I’ll you in the way back machine how this all started to working in social media platforms, actually, before there were social media platforms. Back in the day, I founded and ran a medical device firm which used storytelling to share what it was that we did. We had a device that uses light to relieve pain. We were relieving peoples pain, but it was a new concept at the time. It was something that needed to be explained. We did that via infomercials and be a being on the home shopping network. We also were picked up by the Denver Post and Newsweek and lots of national publications, PBS.
We got a lot of good press, but the device needed to be explained. It needed to be shared. It needed people that had gotten really good results, needed to share that with other people. We needed to form a community around it. We did that pre-platform social media days. We ran that company for about eight years and it grew from a kitchen table endeavor to a $20 million enterprise, and because of the perfect storm and growing too quickly, that business eventually imploded. What I took from that experience is what I learned about human engagement and human interaction. About that time, things were starting to pick up online.
On 2009, I started a platform where people who are in the health and wellness community can have a presence and share with one another the types of things that they were doing. These were innovative types of treatments that again needed to be explained and shared. That platform took off. I was not monetizing that as a business at all. It was really just a community that I had created online, but what I found from that experience was that people within those communities were not very savvy on how to market what they did.
That was right about the time where Facebook and LinkedIn and a lot of different platforms we’re coming to be. CommonSenseHealth.org morphed from a community of health and wellness providers to a digital marketing agency within that space. To make a short story long, that’s how I got there. I was doing the creation of community prior to the ability to do it online. When the power of that gained momentum, I decided that that was a perfect segue in a great place to spend my time in building this new business, new enterprise.
I think about the journey and you mentioned before the show, the shooting schedule back in the day, you were on Home Shopping Network Canada. Folks don’t generally have an idea how that works. Paint that picture if you would for us.
Prior to that, I had lunch with the producer. I was very nervous. I’m the type of person who likes to have all my ducks in a row. Over lunch, I was asking him, “What types of things do I need to watch out for? What are the types of things I need to do?” He said, “Kim, it’s live TV. We have had people pass out. We have had people throw up. We’ve had to drag people off the set and rushed them into an ambulance. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. Besides it’s Canada and there’s hardly anybody here.”Those were his words of wisdom to me before I did that. What was really great about it is I would be up there like every eight weeks or so.
Initially, I was just demonstrating the product, but after a couple of times, we were selling quite a few of them, people would be able to call in and say, “This has changed my life,” with tears in their eyes literally. Being able to share that experience is so much better than the CEO of the company running off a bunch of stats about a piece of equipment. Truly, that ability to have that interaction is what I really took from that experience. Now, we get to do it almost free of charge on these various platforms. It’s become very complex over the years, but we’re able to share our experience both good and bad about business. We were able to do it in a way that we’ve never been able to do that before and it’s wonderful. Those days were a lot of fun. They were long, but we were able to help a lot of people and I took away a lot of knowledge from that. It was a good time.
You do need to make sure that your digital footprint on LinkedIn conveys clearly what you do.
You shifted gears and we call it now pivot, I guess is the word. You pivoted and from that experience, you started a new business.
I decided that the medical device business was very cash intensive. It required outside investors and all of that. I decided I did not want to do that again. I decided I did not want to have a number of employees here and overseas and all of that. It was very, very cash intensive, that business model. Again, with the advent of online being able to communicate online and do business with people across the globe, the costs went way down. I decided that this business model suits my lifestyle, so rather than having the company run me and rather having the company own me, I got to really be the boss. I was on paper the boss before, but now I get to really do it. It’s so much more rewarding. I help other people work smarter in that regard as well, and it’s really rewarding and enjoyable to be able to do that.
For the business that you’re in now, what is your typical client look like?
I’ve got two sides of what I do. I’ve got the digital marketing side, which is CommonSenseHealth.org and that’s generally for medical practitioners, med spa, plastics. The type of business where it’s cash paid and it’s commoditized to a certain degree and it’s very important to be able to differentiate your message. Doing digital marketing services for that group would be that side of the business. Then the other side to do LinkedIn training and speaking and teaching and coaching. I’ve worked with financial services organizations. I’ve worked with direct sales organizations. I’ve worked with MLM organizations. I worked with a number of different types of companies where people need to reach out to other people in business and explain what it is that they do. I teach them to do that on LinkedIn.
The way that I explain it to people is this is something that will follow you your entire life. This is a living, breathing thing. The days of sending in a resume and hoping to get a job are over. You really do need to make sure that your footprint, your digital footprint on LinkedIn conveys clearly what you do and you’re able to post videos and articles and commentary. Communicate in a way and show yourself in a way that you never have been able to do before. It would be those organizations who are looking to train their teams and it would be also those higher level individuals that are very serious about creating and establishing a solid presence for themselves on LinkedIn.
Maybe a good way to approach both sides of your business is let’s talk about a case study example. For example, when you came in to speak to an organization and then the transformation and perhaps when you went into an organization on the MLM or multi-level marketing side. We can paint that picture as to both sides of your business. Let’s say that I’m an organization and I go, “Kim, I want to engage you to come help my company.” What was their pain-point that caused them to reach out and what was the solution that you brought to the table?
The pain point generally is increasing sales. Learning how to communicate and build relationships is how to increase sales. It’s very different than the old shotgun approach of increasing sales. It’s much more laser-focused. That’s generally the pain point. We need to increase sales, we need to have a presence online, we don’t know how to do it. How do we help our team who now maybe are making cold calls and they’re doing things in a more traditional way. We know that this could be more effective. We just don’t know how to do it. That’s the pain point. Coming in and doing teaching opens the door. There are bullet points of the top three things you can do, ways to get your real profile where it needs to be, but then you also need to understand how to work it.
Once people do work the system for a while, for a 30-day period, what they’re seeing is increasing outbound appointments, increasing signing people up, increasing sales from existing accounts where they now come back on the radar again. It’s a very different way of marketing and a lot of companies are trying to still wrap their head around that, but they know that they needed it. They just don’t understand how to do it.
The pain point, once again, not being concerned about becoming irrelevant. That is something that I hear from clients. Either their industry is disrupted to the degree that has been taken out by an app or a new and different way of doing things. They know they need to be present. They just don’t understand how it all works. Giving their salespeople or their executives, the tools to create that presence and increase engagement, thereby increasing sales relationships and bringing in new clients is the solution.
When you’re working with that business that’s considering approaching and using LinkedIn, what’s the biggest misconception perhaps that the business owner that’s been reluctant to pursue LinkedIn has?
If they really don’t understand or believe that things have changed to the degree that they have. There are people who are still making things happen and they’re not engaged digitally. They’re in that world and they’re not really seeing what’s going on, on the other side. Maybe they think it’s hype, maybe they think it’s a fad. There’s just this hesitancy, because they don’t understand. I think that that’s the big thing is going to take too much time. How am I going to measure ROI? How is all this going to work for me? They just don’t understand.
It’s a handholding process to help them see what can happen. Your biggest asset is your team. If you have a team of 25 or 10,000 people all working for you with the outreach that we have now, it is mind-boggling what you can do. The companies that choose not to embrace it, I’m concerned that in a relatively short period of time, they’re going to be struggling to the degree that they’ve not seen before. I would say within five years. I have people that are in my space that say three, which is pretty dramatic.
You’re either going to take and proactively get here or you’re going to be on the other side where your competitors are going to drive you here.
You won’t be able to dig out. That concerns me. When I hear people, “It’s slow. I don’t know.” People that are indecisive.
Before it get too far down the road, how do people reach you on social media if they want to talk?
All of my platforms or to email me or anything can all be found on KimPetersonStone.com.
I think about the larger organization and they have thought process about LinkedIn and I think a lot of times, they get frozen in the headlights. They go, “We have no idea how to move the ship from one course to the other.” If you were called into a larger organization, what were the first two or three steps that you would take to start moving that ship on a different course?
I would find out first of all what types of rules and regulations they may need to abide by. For example, in the financial services industry, which is an area that I work, they’re very, very heavily regulated on what they can say and how they can say it. There are even certain organizations where the people that work for them have a LinkedIn account, but it’s under their umbrella. There’s certain things that they say and that they can’t say. We would start there because we need to know what the rules are before we can determine how we can move forward. That would be step one. Step two would be taking a look at what they’re doing currently. What’s working currently and what’s not working currently, so that we can take a look at what LinkedIn has to offer and see where we can fill in the holes and build it up. Then we take a look at standard practice and how that fits into what their goals and objectives are.
Social Media And Online Marketing: You have to take a look at how you’re tracking things and look at how the new way of doing things.
We know that we’re able to do everything by the book. We know that the materials that that are created are going to work and there’s not going to be any miscommunication at all. Then also offering follow-up, doing coaching afterwards, one-on-one or offering private online groups where people can comment and learn from one another. There’s a tremendous amount of information. We keep it simple so that you can get up and running, run that for 30 days, take a look at exactly what you’ve accomplished because we like to track it back to results and then go from there. Decide where we want to go and then do the coaching and one-on-one and groups based upon that.
We have basically assessment, installation and then we have follow-up and then at some point the owner is going to say, “ROI.” If you were advising an owner how they might track the results of their efforts, what would you recommend they do?
There’s a quote by Gary Vaynerchuk who is a big wig in the social media world and it’s something that’s always stuck with me. He says, “What’s the ROI of your mother?” I don’t go that far because you do have to track ROI, but I get his point. If you are the person in financial services or insurance or real estate or any of these highly, highly saturated highly competitive industries, if you are the person that is going to tell them what they need to know to simplify the process or share with them a great restaurant in town or talk about some wonderful tool that they’ve just come across. If you are that person that is on their radar, you are their trusted advisor before you even become their trusted advisor.
You develop a relationship before it’s time to do business together. Take into consideration the difference is that social media and marketing on LinkedIn is, number one. Number two, in terms of tracking the ROI, it’s not a number of make 100 outbound calls a day. Why? We want you to make one sale and that’s what the stats say. Maybe I made three sales and I made twenty calls. Would that be better? I think it would. You have to take a look at how you’re tracking things and look at how the new way of doing things, which could be an awful lot more efficient and effective fits in. You’ve got to massage it.
Many of them are now used to receiving information through LinkedIn so they’re more comfortable with the media. For the smaller business out there and not the larger organization, let’s say I’m a sole practitioner, whether I’m in the legal profession or medical profession and I’m listening and they’re going, “I’m not this massive organization. It’s me and a handful of people.” What advice would you offer to that specific practitioner as to what they might do on LinkedIn?
I would say don’t be discouraged by the fact that you’re not a big entity and you may actually have advantage by being smaller. If you have your team onboard, whether your team is five or ten or three and they all are contributing valuable information to your network and you’re also searching for other people that can be of benefit to your organization, whether you’re selling to them or you’re partnering with them or they’re going to distribute for you or whatever, you have the same amplification as a larger organization. You can still do that and it’s still very relevant. If you sell products to people who may work at a company, then you need to be on LinkedIn. If you are looking to grow your company and hire new employees, you need to be on LinkedIn. If you’re looking to build distributor ships or partnerships or look for manufacturing partners or whatever, you need to be on LinkedIn. You need to have a presence there.
I always tell people, whenever you are at an event, people still have business cards. I still have business cards, but I don’t use them. They aren’t as effective as let’s make sure we connect on LinkedIn. If we make sure we connect on LinkedIn, then I get to follow you and you get to follow me and you’re in the background. I may not have a need to do business with you for three months or six months or a year. The fact that you’re connected and you’re able to see what you’re doing, forms that relationship and that bond. I like to tell people that works while you sleep. It really does. When you’re out networking in your outworking, you have to physically be there. Your presence on LinkedIn, if you are committed to having it be updated and you have articles or videos or any other thing that you’ve contributed to it, if it’s a living, breathing thing is working for you while you sleep. Why would you not do that? If you don’t do that, someone else is. It’s just a missed opportunity.
There are so many ways to go about LinkedIn. If you were going to go in and look at a smaller businesses’ footprint on LinkedIn, what are the first two or three things you would look at to determine whether you thought they were a good student, a mediocre...
