Tattooed, pierced, a school dropout who'd worked minimum wage jobs her entire life, Lea Turner initially thought LinkedIn wasn't "for people like her."
In 2019, she was a single parent running a small transcription service, struggling to make ends meet and relying on government support. The corporate, polished world of professional networking seemed light-years away from her reality.
But everything changed when Lea decided to do something radical: be entirely, unapologetically herself.
"I kind of had a screw it moment. I'm just gonna be myself because this is not fun. Pretending to be corporate, pretending to be some professional businesswoman that's like everybody else, is never gonna work for me because that's not who I am," Lea explains.
What unfolded is a remarkable story of transformation that defies every traditional career narrative. By embracing her uniqueness—her humor, candid storytelling, and real-life experiences as a single mom—Lea turned LinkedIn from an intimidating platform into her greatest business asset. Her follower count exploded from 400 to 10,000 in just a few months. More importantly, she gained over 100 inbound clients for her transcription business, proving that authenticity is the most powerful marketing tool.
On this episode of Be A Marketer, join Lea and host Dave Charest for this masterclass on personal branding, marketing strategy, and the power of embracing your true self as Lea shares how this journey led to the creation of The HoLT, her membership community designed for small business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs.
☕ What she does: Lea is the founder of The House of LT (The HoLT), a membership community for small business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs. She's a single mother, podcast host, and former LinkedIn trainer who transformed her business through strategic marketing.
💡 Key quote: "I still cringe sometimes before I start posting something or second-guess myself because I know loads of people are going to see it. But I also know that by doing it, I'm changing the life for my son and creating a better existence for both of us. So I'm more scared of dying or lying on my deathbed and going, 'Oh, if only I'd done that,' than I am of putting myself out there and giving it a go."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
Chapters
Tattooed, pierced, a school dropout who'd worked minimum wage jobs her entire life, Lea Turner initially thought LinkedIn wasn't "for people like her."
In 2019, she was a single parent running a small transcription service, struggling to make ends meet and relying on government support. The corporate, polished world of professional networking seemed light-years away from her reality.
But everything changed when Lea decided to do something radical: be entirely, unapologetically herself.
"I kind of had a screw it moment. I'm just gonna be myself because this is not fun. Pretending to be corporate, pretending to be some professional businesswoman that's like everybody else, is never gonna work for me because that's not who I am," Lea explains.
What unfolded is a remarkable story of transformation that defies every traditional career narrative. By embracing her uniqueness—her humor, candid storytelling, and real-life experiences as a single mom—Lea turned LinkedIn from an intimidating platform into her greatest business asset. Her follower count exploded from 400 to 10,000 in just a few months. More importantly, she gained over 100 inbound clients for her transcription business, proving that authenticity is the most powerful marketing tool.
On this episode of Be A Marketer, join Lea and host Dave Charest for this masterclass on personal branding, marketing strategy, and the power of embracing your true self as Lea shares how this journey led to the creation of The HoLT, her membership community designed for small business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs.
☕ What she does: Lea is the founder of The House of LT (The HoLT), a membership community for small business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs. She's a single mother, podcast host, and former LinkedIn trainer who transformed her business through strategic marketing.
💡 Key quote: "I still cringe sometimes before I start posting something or second-guess myself because I know loads of people are going to see it. But I also know that by doing it, I'm changing the life for my son and creating a better existence for both of us. So I'm more scared of dying or lying on my deathbed and going, 'Oh, if only I'd done that,' than I am of putting myself out there and giving it a go."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
What is Be a Marketer with Dave Charest?
As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Dave Charest:
On today's episode, you'll hear from a single mom turned LinkedIn expert who shares her advice on posting with purpose. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:
My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:
Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. As always, grateful to have you here, and grateful to be joined by the one and only Kelsi Carter. Hello, Kelsey Carter.
Kelsi Carter:
Hello, Dave Charest. How are you?
Dave Charest:
I'm doing fantastic. I think I'm having a little bit of a rough brain day today. You ever have one of those?
Kelsi Carter:
Oh, yes. Definitely. I would say, I think I said Dave Charest, like, 17 times in the past twenty minutes.
Dave Charest:
It's all my fault too. So listener, hopefully this is gonna be a, an amazing intro that you're gonna love because, we've got an amazing guest with us here today. And I wanna call this out because I think both you and I have been very active on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a great social channel that has opportunities for your business. And if you've been wondering how to make LinkedIn work for you, I want you to pay particular attention to our guest today.
Dave Charest:
So Kelsi, who is it that's joining us?
Kelsi Carter:
Today's guest is Leah Turner, the founder of the House of LT, a k a The Holt, which is a membership community designed for small business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs to help them improve their skills in all areas of business. Leah also hosts the Holt's Survival Guide for Small Business podcast. But before focusing on the Holt full time, Aleah was an in demand LinkedIn trainer. And before that, she had a small transcription service.
Dave Charest:
Yes. And and she used LinkedIn to grow both of those businesses, which is really amazing how she ended up doing that. And it really wasn't until she decided to just be herself that things really took off for her. And so you wanna pay a particular attention to this conversation, where she covers things like using your differentness as a strength in marketing. She talks to us about how she used LinkedIn to gain over a hundred new inbound clients for her transcription services business in the first six months, and why you actually need a strategy to curate your LinkedIn experience.
Dave Charest:
Now I had the pleasure of meeting Leah in person at a conference in The UK, and she said something to the effect of LinkedIn isn't for people like me. And, you know, you see your success, of course, and you're like, what are you talking about? Well, let's go to Leah as she explains more.
Lea Turner:
For people who are listening, I'm very blonde and I'm very heavily tattooed from my neck to my toes. Pretty much all visible skin has tattoos on it. I've got lots of piercings on my face, I never saw anybody who looked like me when I scrolled LinkedIn. It wasn't just how I looked. Everybody seemed to be university educated.
Lea Turner:
They'd worked in corporate. They'd had very big responsible positions. And I didn't have any of that backstory. I dropped out of school at 16, I'd worked minimum wage jobs my whole life, and I didn't think I belonged there. I didn't think it was somewhere that would welcome me because I didn't see anyone that was like me.
Lea Turner:
So that was why I felt so uncomfortable there. Then I started to see a kind of the more I scrolled and the more I started leaving comments on other people's posts, the more stuff that I liked that I started to see. And I realized that actually LinkedIn was not what I saw wasn't this whole sum of LinkedIn. There was actually loads more people like me or that I certainly felt more comfortable around. And more of that started to come into my feed the more I engaged.
Lea Turner:
That made me feel a little bit more comfortable. Then one day I had a screw it moment. I'm just going to be myself because this is not fun. Pretending to be corporate, pretending to be some professional businesswoman that's like everybody else is never going to work for me because that's not who I am. I posted, I think, a couple of funny memes and posts that were more me and shared a little bit about life as a single parent running a business.
Lea Turner:
Those posts suddenly went really big and I got a following. My following was like 400 people that I used to go to school with and maybe worked with at some point along the way. And then all of a sudden, within a couple of months, it was 10,000 once I started being myself. And then it kept growing and kept growing and kept growing. And I realized that actually, this is what I should be doing, is embracing my humor and my differentness and using it as a strength.
Lea Turner:
And a marketing being different meant I stood out. And while it wasn't always met with positivity, a lot of it was positive. My followers started to grow and that meant that I was getting tons of clients through for the transcription business. And so I got more and more confident with it. And the more confident I got, the more following I got and more business that I got.
Lea Turner:
And it didn't change until COVID hit. So when the world closed down with COVID, most of my clients that I worked with couldn't see their clients. And I had so many people in my messages saying, How are you doing this? How are you getting all these followers? How are you getting all these clients?
Lea Turner:
So I collated what I'd learned and started offering to teach it to other people. That was four and a half years ago now and it exploded since then. It was fully booked all the time, my prices had to go up and I started learning so much about not just LinkedIn, but running a business, finding boundaries, feeling confident in putting prices up, creating packages, digital resources, generating passive income, email marketing. I was
Dave Charest:
like,
Lea Turner:
Wow, I love this. It's so exciting. It was always putting puzzle pieces together. It's like, Right, this is what I want to achieve. How do I get there?
Lea Turner:
The figuring it all out really excited me. I wouldn't necessarily say it myself, but from other marketers, they've said to me, you're clearly a very naturally talented marketer and you've got ahead for this. And so people wanted to learn from me. And yeah, it's continued since then.
Dave Charest:
I'm curious if we could take a little bit of time just in the transcription piece of it, right? Because you got on there to really promote that business and think through that. So like, I'm just curious as to how did the things that you started to do on LinkedIn, how did that actually transform into business for that transcription service?
Lea Turner:
So it would be things like, I've set my profile up to talk about what I actually did because as a transcriber, I worked in a niche market. I did market research, focus groups, because this was before Otter.ai and all the AI transcription capabilities were anywhere near as good as they are now. They needed a human to do it. I was doing things like medical reports and my medical knowledge had developed over the years because I was doing transcription for ten years. So my medical knowledge and vocabulary was very, very good.
Lea Turner:
And I'd also spent over ten years working in with construction companies. So I changed my profile to show my niches and I changed my headline on my profile, fast, efficient transcription for the building consultants. I went and engaged with content building consultants were putting out and they went to my profile. They kept hold of my details. When their staff went on holiday, they would email me to help.
Lea Turner:
Inevitably, I was better at it than their staff were quicker because I was so well versed with writing those reports and I had so much experience. I was fast and so it was cheaper. And so they were coming back to me on repeat. And so it just grew and grew, and I trained other transcribers and took on projects from different industries that they were in niches for. I think I had five people working alongside me within four months.
Lea Turner:
So it went from just me and using LinkedIn to me plus four transcribers, four or five, working. They were working moms working part time. And yeah, I was getting enough. I'd had over 100 inbound clients from LinkedIn in the first six months for transcription, which was great.
Dave Charest:
What motivated you to start The Halt? And what would you say sets it apart from other business hubs that are out there?
Lea Turner:
The reason I started the whole was thinking about my experience starting a business because I had to learn so many new things. I didn't have the money to pay for email marketers. I didn't know anything really about copywriting. I didn't know how to automate my business. I didn't know how to keep my own books.
Lea Turner:
I didn't know about mindset, money mindset, and how to boost my confidence. There were so many things that I had to learn from scratch, which for me, I love learning. I absolutely thrived on learning all of those new skills, but I did it through necessity. Because whether I didn't have the money or I was too scared to spend the money because I wasn't sure I'd keep making the money, I've learned all those skills myself. I realized that one of the big barriers for small businesses is they're having to find more clients so that they can afford to buy the subscriptions that their business needs to run.
Lea Turner:
They need to have a Zoom account, a Calendly account, they need to pay their Stripe fees, They need to have an accounting software and receipt software and all these different things that they need to enable them just to run their business. It adds up to an extra client per month. So I've got this huge influence now with a huge network of people that are always after my audience and lots of people that I've done favors for over the years or I've helped along the way. What if I gave them access to my audience by being the middleman And so small business owners can have access to information and skills that they don't have, that they need, and they can't afford to buy a course for every different skill that they need, and they can't afford to hire someone to do it for them. What if I use my influence and my network to find those experts, bring them in, train the people that need the training, and I just charge a really affordable amount each month that's tax deductible for them so that they can learn all those skills.
Lea Turner:
They can also share their skills with other people. If you need you've got an accountancy query and you pop it inside the membership, an accountant will answer. Then if the accountant has a problem with their tech, someone else will jump in and help with that. It saves them hundreds and hundreds of pounds every month, which is a huge deal when you're a small business. So that was my idea.
Lea Turner:
I wanted to create a community in the traditional sense of a real community like villages used to be back in the day where the butcher helped out the grocer and the grocer provided groceries and swapped it for bread. I was like, Why can't we do that? And that was the motive for it. And it's grown and we offer way more than we did, but we've never increased the price. We've kept it affordable because for me, that's the purpose.
Lea Turner:
It needs to be helping the people that need it the most and having them able to help one another and wanting to help one another. That's exactly what it's become. That's what I'm so proud of, the members and the giving nature of them all to support one another. That's what makes it so different. People come in there with a genuinely open heart to give and help, not just expecting to receive.
Dave Charest:
I want to shift those to talk a little bit about marketing and what you've done specifically to market your business and the whole, and then we'll get into some marketing stuff on for tips for other people, just in terms of LinkedIn. But I wanna start with a story here that that we found as we were kind of, you know, getting prepared for this. And so maybe tell us a little bit about the story behind legally changing your name to include emojis and all of that for for your LinkedIn profile. What was the kerfuffle around that?
Lea Turner:
So about a year after I first started using LinkedIn properly, maybe just a little bit less, I don't know, I must have had about 60,000 followers or something at that point. And I'd started using the rainbow emoji for Pride Month to celebrate Pride, and I just put it on my LinkedIn username. So every time I left a comment or something, you'd see my name pop up and the rainbow in the notifications. And once Pride Month was over, I just left it there. Because a few people had said, Oh, I always notice you because of the rainbow in your name.
Lea Turner:
And I was like, Well, I'm not an ally just during Pride Month. I'm an ally all year round and I'm going to keep the rainbow in my name. But LinkedIn has a rule where you're not actually supposed to have anything in your name other than your name and professional qualifications. So I eventually got locked out of my account by LinkedIn and said, You need to just have your legal name in there. And I went, Hold on a minute.
Lea Turner:
That rainbow is part of my brand. I can't get rid of it. People know me for that rainbow now. I don't want to lose it. So I just had a very petulant child moment and went, I'm not having this.
Lea Turner:
So I went onto the government website in The UK and legally I mean, I did pause for just a moment and thought, is this a good idea? It's going to be a lot of paperwork. Should I really do this? But I paid £54 and I legally changed my name to Leah Rainbow Turner. And then I sent the certificate to LinkedIn and said, It is my legal name.
Lea Turner:
Can I have it back, please? But I also posted it on LinkedIn and it went viral and people thought it was hilarious and it was a great stunt. And they all campaigned for LinkedIn to give me my rainbow emoji back. They actually emailed me and said, You can have it back and let me put it back in my username. So as far as I know, I'm actually the only person on LinkedIn that has permission from LinkedIn to have an emoji in my name.
Lea Turner:
But it got picked up by the media, and they sensationalized the story.
Dave Charest:
It was
Lea Turner:
great when the school moms decided to Google me because one of them recognized me, and that was what came up. This kind of makes me look pretty weird. But it was an amazing PR stunt because everybody was talking about it. I still get tagged in posts about emojis in your name now. Years later, people still tag me as this legendary story for them that made them laugh and how I'm the only person that's allowed an emoji in their name.
Lea Turner:
So yeah, it worked really, really well. It wasn't really my intention to get that amount of PR off of it, which in hindsight, I'm like, that might be my natural marketing skill. I just thought it would be funny. Yeah. I was just like, it's funny, and it might get me my rainbow back.
Lea Turner:
And, yeah, it ended up being this huge thing.
Dave Charest:
Well, I my follow-up question was gonna be, yeah, like, what was
Dave Charest:
the marketing result you kinda saw from this? Because, I mean, in many ways, like
Lea Turner:
Massive massive increase in followers, media attention. It was posted on, like, one of The UK tabloid website UK like, newspaper tabloid websites. It's still there on Google. If you Google Leah Rainbow Turner, the story still comes up. It's not a particularly accurate story because they kinda made me out to go, oh, no.
Lea Turner:
I've changed my name, and I didn't have to. But I I just found the whole thing, like, funny. My mom just rolled her eyes at me. So you haven't really have you. I was like, no.
Lea Turner:
I have.
Dave Charest:
Are you doing anything outside of LinkedIn to market your business?
Lea Turner:
Yeah. So, I mean, I've got, like, a 70,000 followers on LinkedIn. I also have around, I don't know, 16,000 on Instagram, 8,000 on threads. I love threads. 5,000 on Facebook and, I don't know, like 15,000, 16 thousand maybe on TikTok.
Lea Turner:
I don't really use TikTok that very much. So I use all of those channels and I repurpose content across platforms on different days. I've also got company pages on LinkedIn and I've also do email marketing. But I've never yet done any paid advertising.
Dave Charest:
How do you approach getting things done marketing wise
Dave Charest:
and how
Dave Charest:
has that even changed from, I guess, when you started and to where you are now today?
Lea Turner:
I mean, at first I did it all myself. I wasn't really using Instagram at the start. I didn't have the time to do everything. I was just on LinkedIn. I think about a year and a half into sort of establishing myself on LinkedIn, I started a new Instagram profile and started using that.
Lea Turner:
TikTok was only ever a bit of fun. I've never really used it for marketing purposes, but I have had clients from it. Threads and Facebook, I get clients regularly. But I have a team now, so it's not just me doing it all. I have a VA who repurposes my content and schedules it across platforms.
Lea Turner:
So I create it on LinkedIn and I create graphics myself for Instagram because I actually enjoy doing it. I did start the email marketing and did it all myself and learned how to set it all up. Now I have a tech team that manages all the automations, an email marketer that writes all of the newsletters and the launch sequences. But I learned to do it myself first so I knew how I liked it done. And then I worked with a professional who said, This is great, but we could also try this and we could try this.
Lea Turner:
Because I get joy from learning those new skills and I learned so much from him. He's even said to me, You don't actually need me to do this. I was like, Yeah, but I want you to do it because I don't have the time to do it. My launch sequences for the whole was selling it out before I hired him. It wasn't a case of needing him, but I wanted more support and also more ideas because my knowledge of the capabilities of email marketing was very limited.
Lea Turner:
Now I understand it more. I'm like, Oh, so can we do this? And we could do this, and we could do this. But I didn't know this, this, and this was possible before working with a professional. So yeah, I expect I will be venturing into digital ads at some point, but I've not really needed to yet.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. So a couple of things I want to dig into here a little bit. I mean, one of the things we recommend to people to the small businesses that we kinda speak to and work with, you know, that you mentioned you started with LinkedIn and before you kind of added other things. And I think that seems to be one of the big traps of social media, particularly when you feel like there's so many different channels and everybody kinda gets on every channel and then tries to do everything everywhere, and then you never really gain any traction. And so tell me about how important it was that you find to just really focus on LinkedIn before kind of adding anything else to the mix.
Lea Turner:
I found my voice on LinkedIn. I think because I focused in one place, and LinkedIn being my focus because I was able to have conversations and I was seeing people that actually inspired me and I was learning from the people that I was engaging with. I was reading posts from copywriters and email marketers and ad specialists and all these different people that I needed their skills. I was doing all this micro learning every time I read these posts and I was absorbing all of this knowledge and I was like, wow, this is great. I'm learning all the time and getting ideas for things that I didn't know existed.
Lea Turner:
It let me go all in on finding what do people come to me for? What do they follow me for? They love the life stories that I give, so little tidbits of my life. I posted about when I was in Mexico last week, I was posting little stories from being away with my son. And they love this single mother angle where they're seeing a single working mum.
Lea Turner:
They love when I stand up to bullies and I call people out, they go wild for that, or I go on a rant about something that's annoyed me. They really respond to that. They really respond to positive motivational content. And I was like, Okay, great. And then when I post actual advice on how I've done things or how I've learned is a good way to do things, that gets a really positive response.
Lea Turner:
So I was learning what it was that people wanted from me that they responded well to, that then translated into clients and the conversations that would lead to clients, and recommendations for clients. And because I established that first, I then had a whole bank of content ideas that I could then repurpose for Instagram when I was ready, which I did. I'd already learned what people on LinkedIn wanted from me and what my brand voice was, which is incredibly close to my own voice because I'm very sort of authentic with how I put myself out there. And so I just translated that over to Instagram and I found I was getting a positive response there as well because I knew what people wanted from me and I knew what stuff they weren't really interested in about me. And so I could double down.
Lea Turner:
And so it made growing on Instagram easier because I already knew very confidently what my brand voice was. And then I've continued that over. Every different channel, you get a slightly different version because of the rules of the platform and the tone of the platform, but it's still all me. I'm not saying you need to only ever focus on one because I wouldn't say you want to put all your eggs in one basket. That's another mistake people make.
Lea Turner:
But two at the most, and pick the two that you're most likely to find your ideal clients on first. Then if you want to go for the sort of omnipresence on all channels, when you're ready for that, hopefully you've got a team that can help you do that.
Dave Charest:
Right. Well, so I want to go to that, right? Because you mentioned adding to your team and having people do the things that you can't really find the time for. But I think what's interesting about what you said, and I think is important for people to hear, is that you learned it first. You understood how it worked.
Dave Charest:
Because I think this is the challenge, right? I think people will bring on people who are talking a good talk, but don't really know what the heck they're doing, and then you end up in this situation where you're just wasting money because you're not really getting the results from it. And so, tell me about just that process of really getting an understanding and then knowing when the time was to, Okay, now I want to delegate this, but still be able to understand what's happening with it.
Lea Turner:
I think that's probably been one of the biggest strengths that I've had in terms of growing my team is everything that I've hired someone for, apart from maybe all the automation because my brain does not like all of the little fiddly bits of putting those patterns together so much.
Dave Charest:
Yeah, you get that. Okay, this, this, this, and then yeah.
Lea Turner:
Yeah, Like, my my brain just glitches out. I can't do this. But I know what I want the end result to be. I know that I want that to do that, and then that happens, and then that happens. And then they go, okay.
Lea Turner:
Well, we can do that. So I started working with an automation team when I kind of understood what I wanted, and we went did a full audit of my business and they went, Okay, well, we can automate that, that, that and that. And maybe we could do this. I go, Oh, yeah. Can we do this?
Lea Turner:
I learned the copywriting first and I learned the email marketing first and then we expanded on it. Knowing what I wanted and knowing that I could do it myself made me feel safe because if ever I couldn't afford to pay for someone or if they were off sick or some disaster happened, I knew I could step in, which made me much more confident when I was hiring someone. So I was like, I want to hire someone. I know how long it takes me to do it. So I want a professional to be faster.
Lea Turner:
I know how much effort I put into it and what results I can get. So if I can get those results, I want my professional to get better results. So I had a baseline to work from and then I went Okay, can you do this better, faster and get better results? They said Yes. Then they demonstrated it and I went Yeah, they are getting better results.
Lea Turner:
Therefore, this is value for money for me. If I didn't have that baseline, I would be groping around in the dark. I don't know what good is. If I'm paying an email marketer one thousand pounds a month and they're making me £1,500 I'm going, Okay, I'm making £500 profit. But if I can make £1,000 a month myself doing it, I want to be making $2.03, $4 a month from what they're doing.
Lea Turner:
And they do. So I think it's difficult to say everyone should do that because I know that I'm quite unique in my hunger for that knowledge and the way my brain works to absorb that knowledge and want to implement it. Not everybody's designed to be good at those things, and they don't necessarily have the time to learn and implement. But that's one of the reasons the whole is great because you know you're going to get a trusted recommendation from someone who has used that person and you're not just Googling and hoping for the best. And that's something else.
Lea Turner:
All the teams that I work with, I recommend loudly to everybody because I know they're bloody brilliant And that helps their business and they become even more loyal to me. So it's all one hand washes the other, I guess.
Dave Charest:
So you mentioned email marketing a little while ago here. And I want to ask, you've got a huge LinkedIn following.
Lea Turner:
You've got
Dave Charest:
a huge social following, you've got all this, why do you need email?
Lea Turner:
Doctor. Because email, I own. I own that data. And if my account was to get banned or I decided that I wanted to take a step back from social media for
Dave Charest:
a while, maybe I need a mental health break or maybe
Lea Turner:
I want to go on holiday and not be dealing with hundreds of comments and messages every day, my email marketing still runs. It doesn't matter if I'm active on social media, I can still contact people and stay relevant in their inboxes without having to create content on social media because I'm not going to be a LinkedIn influencer. I hate that term, but I'm not going to be that forever. And I still want my businesses to be able to make money even if I'm not posting every day on social media. So for me, that's the most important thing.
Lea Turner:
It's safer to have the ability to contact people via email than relying on a social media platform that I have no ownership over. They can get rid of my account at any time. And I've seen it happen to so many people. People with over 100,000 followers just losing their accounts because they've done something unknown on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's gone, We don't like that, and then their accounts are gone.
Lea Turner:
But having had my account banned in the past for things that I haven't actually done wrong as well, I felt that vulnerability and it made me realize I've got to start building an email list.
Dave Charest:
I want to go back to LinkedIn specifically and start talking about just some ideas on just in terms of marketing there. From your perspective, what's the value of LinkedIn for business owners?
Lea Turner:
You could go into a bar for thirty minutes on your way home every day from work, and that bar is full of people that you can learn from or could sell your services to or could benefit from their services, and you can spend thirty minutes in that bar having a chat with those people and building relationships and trust and getting referrals for work and getting some advice, would you do it? Who wouldn't do it? Right? That's what LinkedIn is. When you use it well, you're building a reputation amongst people that are useful to you in one way or another, whether that's just because they entertain you, whether they teach you, whether they're going to buy from you, whether you're going to buy from them.
Lea Turner:
They are useful people. And when you curate your LinkedIn experience well, that is exactly what you're doing. But you're doing it from your sofa while you have your morning coffee or on the train home after a day at work. You can do it absolutely anywhere at any time of day, completely intentionally and efficiently, if you learn to do it well. You're literally walking into your own personally crafted networking event every day.
Lea Turner:
So why wouldn't you do that? And the benefits of building your own visibility and your own authority in your space, as well as generating clients for your business, there's nowhere else online that you can do it as well as you can do it on LinkedIn. William Green (3five thirty three):
Dave Charest:
So I'm curious to this because I think or I'm curious what you find with the people that you work with, particularly at the beginning. Because I think there's this social media LinkedIn, obviously, we're talking about there but it becomes about like, okay, what am I posting? And it just becomes about the posting piece. And I think what you bring up is really interesting because it's actually not about posting as much as it is about curating the experience and having a strategy behind what it is that you're trying to do. So talk to me about that.
Lea Turner:
So Yes, you should be posting content. Right? But I started getting clients on LinkedIn before I started posting content of my own because I did it by having a headline that said what I do. So when I commented on a client's post and they read my comment, they would see my headline. And then they'd go to my profile because they saw that what I do might benefit them.
Lea Turner:
They'd read my profile and go, Wow, do you know what? She seems quite good at what she does. This is what we need. They'd see recommendations on my profile from previous customers that have gone, Yeah, she is good at what she does. They now feel safe and they're contacting me without ever having seen any of my posts on their feed, even without being connected to me.
Lea Turner:
That's replicable for a lot of people. It was easier for me because I was very niche in the specific target market I was going for, so I knew exactly who to target. But if you really know who they are, then you can do that. Most people, when they log on to their LinkedIn, if they're not active users on the platform, and I mean, this may be scrolling, but they're not leaving comments, they're not creating their own content, they will see a combination of people they went to college with, people they used to work with, old bosses that they dread content, recruiters that maybe they connect with when they were job hunting. And so the content that they're seeing is just full of people that are saying, I'm excited to announce something that's as exciting as hemorrhoids, right?
Lea Turner:
It's not. You just end up with this whole newsfeed of things that aren't interesting to you. And because it's not interesting, you don't leave comments. And then you log off and you're not inspired to come back to LinkedIn. But if you start unfollowing or disconnecting from the people that have no need to be in your network now, you don't have to be seeing their content.
Lea Turner:
They're not of any benefit to you professionally or personally now. Get rid of them and then find people that are talking about things you are interested in. So if you want to see pictures of office dogs, go and look up office dogs in the search bar and you will see a load of posts about cute office dogs. If you're interested in gardening or golf or politics, whatever it might be, if you start searching for things that are actually interesting to you and commenting on the posts that you like, your newsfeed will transform really, really fast, like really fast. And suddenly when you log in, you're not seeing the boring recruiters and the ex boss that you dread seeing from ten years ago.
Lea Turner:
You're seeing people that are interested in similar things to you, that are talking about subjects you want to learn about, that are sharing insights in your particular industry, in your particular niche, that you can have intelligent conversations about, that other people can see your comments that you're leaving and go, Oh, that person seems interesting. I'll connect with them. And that's how you start curating your experience. There's no point in doing any of that unless you've got a profile that actually says what you do for people, the transformations that you create, how you do it, how they can get in contact with you, and demonstrates who you are as a professional, not just something cut and paste out of your resume or your speaker bio written in the third person. So having a profile that really speaks to who you are and a headline that says what you do, then going and finding the people that inspire you, motivate you, teach you, entertain you in whatever way your newsfeed is going to transform.
Lea Turner:
And you're going to find yourself scrolling LinkedIn at 7PM going, Who am I? Who have I turned into? I'm actually enjoying spending time on LinkedIn. And we all go through that. We all go, Oh my God, who am I?
Lea Turner:
I actually enjoy spending time on LinkedIn. Ugh. One of them now. I went through that. And then I was like, yeah.
Lea Turner:
But I'm getting clients, making money. I don't care what other people think.
Dave Charest:
Yeah.
Lea Turner:
And you try and convince someone or meet a stranger and they go, a LinkedIn trainer. I didn't even know that was a thing. And I'm like, I know. You just post content on LinkedIn and then you've got loads of followers. You're an influencer.
Lea Turner:
LinkedIn has influence. I'm like, yes, I know because you just see this weird little boring corner of LinkedIn because you never engage. And mine is full of, like, beautiful rainbows and diverse people and interesting conversations and animals and people chatting about their personal lives and their professional lives and mingling the two. And I'm like, this is great. This is super social.
Lea Turner:
This is a fun event that I go to every time I log in. And, yeah, it's hard to convince people. But when they actually get involved in it, they go, oh, actually, LinkedIn's awesome. People are really, really supportive. It's a really great place, like I told you so.
Dave Charest:
Well, so you're an introvert. Am I correct? You would consider that. So what advice do you have for other people who are maybe shy or hesitant to, one, start posting or even start engaging on LinkedIn?
Lea Turner:
Find things that are interesting to you that you don't need to be a so one of the things I really struggled with was, who am I to be acting like I know all this stuff about stuff? Because I felt proper imposter syndrome. Like, I don't know anything about the corporate world. I don't know anything about business. I'm just this little typist that works from home in my slippers with my kid running around.
Lea Turner:
But I found things that were interesting to me on a personal level that I felt more comfortable starting conversations about. There was one lady that came, she said, I don't know what to comment. It just feels weird. I feel like I'm walking into a room full of strangers and just joining in a conversation. Firstly, that's totally okay on LinkedIn.
Lea Turner:
People are welcome to do that. We don't publish things on the internet if we don't want to have conversations about them. If we want to post it, we put it in our diary if we didn't want to have conversations about it. So people are wanting you to join and they're grateful when you add your insights to their posts. It's not, Oh, who's a stranger commenting on my post?
Lea Turner:
It's, Oh, thank you, stranger, for helping boost the reach of my post and for joining my conversation. So for introverts, I think the thing is, like the lady that I was saying about, I said, Okay, but what are you interested in outside of work? She said, Gardening. I said, Cool. Go and find some posts on gardening.
Lea Turner:
Go and look up gardening. She found pretty pictures of gardens, horticultural companies, all of that sort of thing. And it was easy for her to comment on that because she's genuinely passionate about it. And so she got a little bit more comfortable joining conversations with strangers because it was about something she is passionate about. So that's a really good sort of entry level to start anesthetising you against that real weird awkwardness.
Lea Turner:
Also, finding people that you really, really relate to. So find other introverts because there are lots of them on LinkedIn, like people that are neurodiverse, people that are introverted, people that are ambiverts. You'll find people talking about it. Put the words into the post. Look up imposter syndrome.
Lea Turner:
There's tons of conversations. And when you realise that you're not the only one, it's not so scary because you can just go and have conversations with other introverts that know how you feel. Or just post about it, just say, God, I feel weird about it. But I did. I said, I've always got imposter syndrome.
Lea Turner:
I do everything scared constantly, all of the time. But it's about what you are prepared to go through to get to where you want to be. And it's really uncomfortable sometimes. If you want
Dave Charest:
to achieve things you've never achieved, you have to do
Lea Turner:
things that you've never done. You just have to start and it gets better and it gets easier. I still cringe sometimes before I start posting something or second guess myself because I know loads of people are going to see it. But I also know that by doing it, I'm changing the life for my son and creating a better existence for both of us. So I'm more scared of dying or lying on my deathbed and going, oh, if only I'd done that, than I am of putting myself out there and giving it a go.
Dave Charest:
Are there any lesser known kind of engagement type of tactics or things that you've learned on LinkedIn that kind of helps?
Lea Turner:
Yeah. I mean, if you're posting a piece of content, making sure that you leave a few comments on the newsfeed before your post goes live so that the algorithm- so LinkedIn knows that you're active, and then also responding to the comments that come in on your posts. And to get comments on your post, you need to make people welcome to get involved with the conversation. So asking a simple question and I don't mean like thoughts or agree make it a tangible question so that they know what they need to do. I almost always end a post with either a strong statement or a question that allows people to know I am expecting you to leave a comment here and I'm going to then respond to your comment because every comment that you get shows your post to more people.
Lea Turner:
And when you respond to each comment, your post is shown to more people. So using your posts to initiate conversations with people and then hanging around to have those conversations. And that means when you respond to comments, those people are more likely to come and comment in the future because they feel appreciated. And if you ignore everyone's comments, they're not going to keep commenting because they don't feel good. If you ask me a question and start a conversation and I respond and then you ignore me, that's not what you would do in real life.
Lea Turner:
So don't do it on LinkedIn. So those are two things, making sure that you're engaging around the time of your post going live, whether that's scheduled or you're doing it yourself, and responding to your comments really, really helps. But the more you are active on the platform by DMs and commenting, the more your content's going to get pushed to more people.
Dave Charest:
Is there anything else you want people just kind of getting started with LinkedIn do you think they should know?
Lea Turner:
Mary Childs (3five thirty seven): Absolutely. Everybody is terrified when they first start, almost everybody. Even the people that you see with huge engagement and huge followings now, we all started without a clue. My first ever post on LinkedIn was horrific and I got eight sympathy likes from old colleagues. And it was me talking about the myriad of professional services I offer in transcription.
Lea Turner:
I would never speak like that now. It was so cringe when I look back at it. But you're not going to be the best at it the first day you start, but you're never going to be the best at it if you don't start. So try and people aren't expecting you to be amazing. You don't need to be the top of your field to have something worthwhile to say.
Lea Turner:
And people are incredibly interested in everyone if you allow them to be interested in you. I get a lot of people that say, Oh, but I'm not that interesting. I haven't really got anything to talk about. I've done thousands of one to one sessions with business owners and I have never met somebody that's not interested. But the only reason people are not interested is because you're not sharing anything.
Lea Turner:
So people can't be interested if you don't give them the opportunity to. I've talked about everything from weird interviews that I've had to type up about cow insemination. I've talked about my clumsiness. I remember one post that went viral when I admitted to the fact that I'd been watering a plastic plant for four months and hadn't noticed. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare or a white paper to have value.
Lea Turner:
Giving someone a smile is providing value. And if someone makes you smile, you remember them. The next time you see their name, you feel compelled to stop because you've got this familiar tug of a good feeling that you had. The last time you saw their name, subconsciously in your head, you're like, oh, the last time I saw that name, I felt good. So now I'm stopping scrolling and I'm going to pay attention to the next thing.
Lea Turner:
So being themselves and sharing doesn't have to be everything about themselves. They don't have to share their life story. They don't have to share their mental health journey or pictures of their children, but letting people know you're a parent, for example, what you're up to at the weekend, what meetings have you got lined up this week that you're looking forward to, what events are you attending? Just use it as a journal, tell us what you're doing because it shows you. It shows who you are, what you're up to, people trust you more if they see other people working with you.
Lea Turner:
People have this idea that everything has to be some super valuable essay and then they wonder why no one reads it. It's like no one's reading 3,000 characters from somebody that they've never engaged with before, unless you've got some huge brand name under your name. People go, Oh, okay. I'm paying attention to the person who's got Nike or Apple written under their name. But everybody's got value there and there's a crowd for everybody.
Lea Turner:
It's just a case of finding the right tribe of people and you can't do that unless you explore. But the value of doing it, like the people that I work with, when they get involved with LinkedIn, they're like, this is life changing. Why didn't I do this before? I had no idea I could do this on LinkedIn and it's not even as hard as I thought it was going to be. Like, yeah.
Lea Turner:
I know. I know. Gonna tell more people.
Dave Charest:
Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, know your baselines. Now there may become a time when you'll need to hire professionals to help you grow your business. But as Leah mentioned, when you hire, you want someone to be saving you time and getting you much better results than you can get on your own. Leah had a baseline for what looks good because she had done the work for herself.
Dave Charest:
Now armed with this data, she was then able to make smart decisions on whether or not a hire was worth the investment. And so knowing what you've been achieving on your own really adds some perspective to the return you're getting in terms of time and results. So know your baselines and use them to guide you in hiring decisions. Number two. Own your data.
Dave Charest:
When I asked Leah, a LinkedIn influencer with a huge following, why do you need email? Her answer was very clear. Because email, she owns. She owns that data. Her email marketing runs, and it doesn't matter if she's active on social media.
Dave Charest:
She wants her business to make money even if she's not posting every day to social. And there's also the vulnerability that your social accounts can be shut down for, well, unknown reasons. That's made her realize the importance of building an email list. And, hopefully, you recognize this as well. Own that direct relationship with your customers.
Dave Charest:
Number three, curate your LinkedIn experience. Leah made the great point that you're in charge of what you see on LinkedIn. And so if you actively and strategically start to think about not only what you want to see, but what people see when they engage with you, your curated experience is going to be much more valuable to you. But remember, there is no point of doing any of it if your profile doesn't demonstrate who you are as a professional. You've gotta make it clear and show what you do, the transformations that you create, how you do it, and how potential customers can get in contact with you.
Dave Charest:
Remember, social media on any channel is more than just posting content. It's about posting and engaging with purpose. So here's your action item for today. Get more intentional about your social media efforts. Again, remember, posting alone isn't a strategy.
Dave Charest:
You've gotta post and engage with purpose to support the goals you've set for your business. And don't forget to turn those social followers into contacts that you own by inviting them to join your email list. As always, you'll find more resources in the show notes.
Dave Charest:
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam.
Dave Charest:
Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.