EP10: Unlocking the Secrets of LinkedIN Marketing | Corey Dissin

On this episode of the Get Business Smart podcast, Tony talks with Corey Dissin, unlocking the secrets of effective LinkedIn marketing and personal branding from a seasoned coach. Corey shares insights on transitioning from employee to entrepreneur, leveraging LinkedIn for business growth, and cultivating self-reliance to achieve financial and personal freedom.

TAKEAWAYS

• How to monetize LinkedIn and build an engaging personal brand
• The mental shift from employee to entrepreneur and overcoming programming
• Daily marketing habits: consistency, content types, and engagement strategies
• Using LinkedIn features like audio/video messages and premium tools effectively
• Creating ripple effects on LinkedIn: expanding your network and influence
• Stories of self-reliance and independence from Corey’s early career
• Practical tips for integrating social media into your business growth
• Recommendations for impactful business and sales books

CONNECT WITH COREY DISSIN AT coreydissin.com

Get Business Smart Coaching helps entrepreneurs and leaders build better businesses and better lives on purpose with purpose.

Learn more about Get Business Smart Coaching at TonyBradshaw.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Hey, welcome back to the Get Business Smart Podcast. And today on the show, we're going to be talking about some marketing with Corey Disson. He is the founder of Knockout Life and Higher Performance Coaching, marketing and business coach. So you guys are going to be talking about marketing a little bit today, a little social media, and uh get some insights, especially on LinkedIn. I think, Corey, that was one of what you said your specialty was was how to monetize LinkedIn. I want to know how to monetize LinkedIn. I'm actually doing a little in LinkedIn marketing here the last month, not doing a very good job of it yet. I may have picked up, I may have picked up one client out of three outreaches that I've done. So we'll see if I can land that client or not. He's also the author of the book Going the Distance and one of the few still left in California, I think. I think most of your Californians are moving to either Florida, Texas, or Tennessee right now. I know we got a lot of Californians here in Tennessee moving in. They even apologize, Corey. They're like, I'm not like those other Californians. I'm I'm a different kind, so don't get mad at me when they come. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

But I'm not native. I'm transplanted from Philadelphia. And compared to the uh the high-speed lifestyle I led there for many decades, this is a welcome change. And uh I'm staying. I'm staying. I'm gonna pay the sunshine tax and then and love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Now, you mentioned in the pre-show you had a Harley at some point. Do you still have a Harley or do you give up much?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I do not, reluctantly, I do not. I because this is a great place to ride a bike for sure. But uh was one of the toys I had to give up in the the couple of the moves that we made because I didn't have a place to store it, and I just didn't feel was doing it any justice to just sit out front outside of the house. So uh someone else I sold it, and then that uh person hopefully is enjoying it. But if I can convince my both of my sons to let me do it again, uh it's on the radar for sure. They're like, Dad, you're getting old, man. You shouldn't be riding a bike no more, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I don't know about that. I mean, you see some old guys doing it. So and uh so let me ask you this, because uh those Harleys can get pretty pricey. So what did you have to drop on your Harley when you bought it? And how and when did you buy it, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

So I had my Harley in uh geez, 2017? No, no, earlier than that. Fairly recently. Earlier than that. But it I it did it was a few hundred bucks a month. It wasn't I didn't throw that much money down. To me, I thought I was getting off cheap. I think the you know, even with the insurance, it wasn't that much, but it was uh I had a Harley soft tail deluxe. I put aftermarket Vance and Heinz pipes on it with the fish tail end caps, I had white wall tires. That thing was just decked out, man. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yeah, well, you'll have to send me a picture. Maybe we'll put that up on the blog.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I'll have to dig it out.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Yeah, I'm sure you've got a picture of that bike, so I'll put it up on the blog when I post your episode.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Cool, cool.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

So let's talk business for a little bit. You know, I think one of the big things, I'm a I'm an entrepreneur, first generation entrepreneur. Um, been corporate world through 2016, started doing the entrepreneurial thing in 2017. Uh it takes a little while to learn it, you know. When you go from being a working job guy for since you were 13 years old, which is what I was, to where you're 46, and then all of a sudden now you're doing entrepreneurial stuff. It's a big shift, man. It's a big shift, it takes a little while. I asked one of my friends at the time, uh, how long did it take you to make the shift from job to entrepreneur? And he said, 10 years to get like deprogrammed from working a job to actually being a what you could call a moderately successful entrepreneur. So it's a big, it's a big mental shift. And uh, in my case, uh I came out being more of a builder because my dad's a carpenter, I was an engineer, I built systems for Dave Ramsey. So I was very systems programmed mentally, so I could build a website, I could put software in place, I could do all these different things, these talents, but that thing you gotta do every day, you gotta wake up as an entrepreneur and you gotta market and you gotta sell something. And that's not natural to me. It's not natural for me to do that. I have to purposely turn that switch on and go, oh, I need to sell something today. So uh let's talk a little bit about marketing right now. What do you want to start with as far as like marketing and what you can share with people?

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Well, I mean, to sort of uh uh address what you just talked about, you know, how do you make the shift from employee to entrepreneur? I mean, for me, I I would say it was a little easier. It did take a lot of time because keep in mind, most human beings are programmed to be employees. From elementary school, you learn how to get in line, what time to show up, where to be, what to do. That carries over to high school, you know, obviously then to college. You get a little more freedom that way, but it boils down to you are responding to what someone else tells you to do. Do this by this time and do it in this way. That's how people are taught to be employees. When you're an entrepreneur, you got to make all those decisions. When to do something, what to do, how often, et cetera, et cetera. I had the luxury, and so I didn't feel it as much. I started in in the uh the the voiceover, the production business at age 19. I was still in college when I got my first full-time job working for a nationally known voiceover talent by the name of Paul Turner. And I was kind of his little mascot, his little minion. And he he allowed me to kind of learn on the fly, but it came to a it came to a point where he said, Look, in order for me to justify paying you, you have to go out and find me new business. So I didn't get into the broadcasting business to sell. I I wanted to be what you're doing. I wanted to be behind the mic, I wanted to be the talent, but I found out quickly that in the radio business, especially, with a snap of the fingers, your job could be over. And I saw an entire air staff get fired two weeks into my internship. So I said, you know what? I got a bad habit. I like to eat three times a day. What can I do that's a lot more stable? So I got involved in production, and like I said, I got involved with Paul Turner and I said, okay, here I am. I am the oldest brother because there wasn't anybody underneath me. It was me and him running this little production company. And to justify my own salary, I had to teach myself how to pick up a phone with a cord. I'll tell you how long ago that was, and using the phone book that still existed, and I started dialing for dollars and learning that, like you said, you always have to be selling. And it was kind of by survival. Like it was my own survival. I saw an opportunity. I was given a ground floor opportunity to work for a major market, nationally known, bicoastal represented voiceover guy to be his guy, to run his production company. So as we grew, as I sold uh 10 clients, 12 clients, and we started to generate some revenue, and we started to hire other producers, junior producers, admins, that turned out to be kind of my forte was constantly getting the name of the business out there, Paul's name, the production company, et cetera. And that just became part of the fiber of my day. It wasn't a task. And I learned what I teach is marketing is like brushing your teeth. It's not something you have to do every day. You shouldn't have to think about I need to block off 15 minutes here or an hour there, or I need to make this many calls or this many emails. You don't do that with brushing your teeth. And if you don't do it for brushing your teeth, you shouldn't do it for marketing, both of which are very important. Your dental health is directly tied to your mental health. How do you like that explanation? You weren't expecting that, were you?

SPEAKER_02 8:09

No, no. I I like the uh alliteration. Do you try to write songs every now and then, Corey?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Oh, what? I don't even know. I just like making you laugh. I know I that's fun in and of itself.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah, yeah. You're doing good doing a good job with it. Yeah, so I think the the reality there is like I think you learned pretty young age, you like get out you gotta get out and sell something. Like it it depends on you, your life depends on you, uh, the results depend on you, which I think is uh it's very motivating. I guess that's where you find your motivation. Versus just like you said, the J O B. You go to you go to school, you learn when to get up, you gotta be at school on a certain time, you gotta be in line, you get told when you go to lunch, you get told how long you can eat for lunch, you get back in line, you get back, you go to the bathroom on a break, you get a bathroom break, right? Everybody lines up, goes to the bathroom. Like it is just like prison. It's so interesting. My uh daughters sent me a little thing and it was showing the difference between a prison and a public school. Not much. They're the exact same building, not much, same building. Cinder blocks, you know, cinder blocks, hallways, you know, cafeteria. Same look, same thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Some of them have uniforms.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Yeah, yeah. So sure do, sure do.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Look, another point I want to make is forgive me for interrupting you. I was also very lucky to have two parents that demanded that I was self-reliant and independent. So, I mean, seven, eight years old, letting myself in the house, you that just doesn't happen anymore now. But, you know, letting myself in the house after school, if I had uh any type of issue, uh I talk about it in my book. I had an issue with a teacher when I was like a sophomore in high school. My mother was a teacher. I I grew up, the teacher's always right. But I had this issue with this teacher, and I said, Hey, mom, can we set up like a parent-teacher conference to uh kind of iron this out because I'm having a tough time? And she said, Well, we could set up a conference, but it's not going to be a parent-teacher conference. It's gonna be a student teacher conference. So my mother made me set up a conference with a teacher I wasn't vibing with, and I had to have the do the conference myself. Like that'll give you the a sense of Now, how old were you? I was 15 years old. I was dumb in a box of rocks, man. And I had to go in there and conduct myself and and try to articulate, you know, look, she said her piece, I said mine, we whatever. I can't even remember the exact circumstance, but that we were butting heads. And at the end of the day, it was less about solving that problem, that specific problem with that teacher. And my mother was teaching me how to fend for myself and not to depend on mommy and daddy to to wipe your ear end anytime you get a little bit of a pickle. And I took that with me. You know, look, looking back now, I took that with me. But at the time it was more innate that I didn't know any better. If I had, if I had a problem, if I wanted something, I had to figure it out. I didn't depend on uh an administrator, a boss, a supervisor to do, I took every job, even when I worked pushed, you know, grocery carts and packed bags at the Kroger. I acted like an owner was my business. And I've done that everywhere. Whether it was, you know, I ran the door at nightclubs, I was the guy in charge of all the other meatheads. You know, that turned into me. Um, you know, I've always been the shop steward, the guy making the decisions for everybody else, because leadership, accountability, responsibility, independence were not optional in my home. And thank goodness that gave me a distinct advantage in the workforce. And like I said, landed a uh a full-time gig in my profession, age 19, stayed there till I was 46. And I was able to semi-retire after that. Yeah. Um, so I I take all these lessons and I I try to to uh pass them along to the people that hire me as their coach.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So well, let's shift gears. Uh so that's all good stuff. I I think it's really cool when you're talking about the self-reliance, especially 15, going toe-to-toe with the teacher. That's not something that young people typically do. I mean, our kids our kids do pretty well with that kind of stuff because of the way they were brought up. They were in a private school system that was designed that way. That you know, the kids had to get up and do speeches every year and prep speeches and defend and do thesis and kind of uh what they call it debates and things like that. Yeah, learn how to think for themselves, which they don't really like teaching that in school today. But so let's shift gears. One of the things you mentioned was uh LinkedIn marketing. So why don't we talk about LinkedIn marketing a little bit? I'm doing some LinkedIn marketing. I don't know that I'm doing it the best way, but I'm doing something. I'm trying to figure it out. So why don't you uh run through your protocol or maybe some tips on uh doing LinkedIn marketing?

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I mean, look, the the first thing you need to know is I very much drink the LinkedIn Kool-Aid. I've got a pretty sizable network there, I've got a ton of engagement, I'm very present there, and I'm I'm not afraid to say out loud that LinkedIn changed my life. LinkedIn was the tool that helped escalate my semi-retirement because while running the production company, of course I had a LinkedIn account and I had a little network and I had some clients connecting me on there. I start to absorb some of the other talking heads out there and kind of watching what they're doing. This is like 2016-ish. I'd been on LinkedIn since 2006, and I see this one guy on there, and he is to me electrifying. He's got kind of a funny voice, very gruff speaking. He's pointing his finger and he's giving all these sales tips and tactics and things on videos and pictures, and he's got a lot of moxie. Um, and he's you know, he's tough and edgy. And I said to myself, man, I could do that. That looks like me. I could do that, but I didn't know what it was called. I didn't know it was content marketing, I didn't know personal branding, I didn't know any what those the buzzwords were yet. But so you know what I did? I sent the guy a DM. And this guy was very popular. And here's this little peon going to give him a call. I said, Hey man, would you mind hopping on a call with me? I want to pick your brain. And damn it, if he didn't, he said, okay. I got on the phone with him and I start, you know, having a conversation, and he's telling me he's asking me about my business, and I tell him what I want to do. I want to start coaching people, I want to start doing like you're doing. And I said, I made, I said something to him, and he said something back to me. By the way, this all has ties back to LinkedIn. Just bear with me. I said, you know, if I could be half as good at what you're doing, I'd be in pretty good shape. And he said, Corey, you are what you say you are. I was like, whoa. That was that was like electrifying to me. Like it hit me in the head like a ball peened hammer. I'm like, you are what you say you are. So he's basically telling me, stop saying you want to be a coach. Start acting like that coach right now. So I started putting out content that day, giving tips for voiceover talent and actors and production people, and putting out some really terrible-looking stuff. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. It was awful, pathetic. But I started doing it, and sure enough, I started to pick up an account here, an account there that turned into four, six, eight, ten. Eventually had I was making the same money coaching that I was as a full-time employee. And that was the the bell that rung in my head like, what am I doing? Why am I driving to a brick and mortar location and hustling to only make a portion of the gross amount of money for this somebody else's business where I can take all of my efforts, all of my skills, all of my energy, and I'm getting 100% of the revenue. And that's what got my attention to make this coaching business. And LinkedIn was a big part of that. You know, people, I tell people all the time, if you don't want to make money, don't use LinkedIn. LinkedIn, when used properly and when used consistently, is a cash machine. But you it a, it takes an immense amount of effort to get it off the ground. And it takes a lot of implementation of very specific systems to do certain tasks every day, to connect with people, to engage with people, to provide content for people, using the messaging properly, all those things in combination, when all those pistons are firing, LinkedIn is by far the best social media tool to create a funnel for your business. I mean, you know, without giving away the milk for free, you know, without buying the cow, that's basically what I can tell you. You know, there's there are things that I learned by stepping on landmines and screwing up and figured out don't do X, do this instead. That once you do these certain things in a certain series and a certain cadence, you get a certain result. And LinkedIn operates in a very different way than an Instagram or a Facebook or a TikTok, in that uh a lot of what you do reverberates throughout your your network. Not quite the same way. A lot of content and interactions get pushed down the feed on the other platforms. LinkedIn works very much like you're old enough to remember maybe skipping a stone at the on a lake, right? What happens when you skip that stone on a lake? What happens to the water?

SPEAKER_02 18:25

The ripples.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

The ripples. You get the concentric circles that expand out. That's LinkedIn. That's how LinkedIn works. Most folks are concerned with where the rock plumps. I'm telling you, you got to work on the circles. You get really good at all the different degrees, like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. You ever play that drinking game? That's another one, another story I like to tell. Most people on LinkedIn try to connect with Kevin Bacon all the time. So no, no, no, no, no. Connect with all the people that Kevin Bacon acted with, and then you'll eventually get Kevin Bacon. That's really boiling it down. But LinkedIn allows you to let me see if I can explain this. Connect with your connections, possessive, connections, plural. If you remember that, like when I connected with you, I didn't just connect with you, I connected with everybody you're connected to. And now anytime you and I interact, you comment on something, I tag you, etc. etc. All of your network is privy to those interactions, and that breeds even more interactions, grows your network, more impressions, more views, and that's the beauty of how LinkedIn works.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Awesome, awesome. Yeah. Yeah, uh, I got into LinkedIn really early. Like, man, I I was really, really early into LinkedIn. Probably like 2002 or 3 or whenever it was out.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And it was still like the business website.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah. I was pretty early on a lot of stuff. I was pretty early on Twitter, pretty early on Facebook, pretty early on LinkedIn. Uh but yeah, and then I was pushing LinkedIn at Dave Ramsey's trying to get everybody like, hey, we need to do LinkedIn, we need to do LinkedIn, we need to do LinkedIn. Yeah, some of our VPs and executives didn't even have profiles on LinkedIn. Man. That's hard to believe for a long time, yeah. And then finally everybody started getting on board with it. Yeah, so when you do your LinkedIn marketing right now, I honestly don't know that much about LinkedIn marketing. What I'm doing right now is uh hitting up uh my first degree connections, uh going through just searching business owner on the business profiles, finding people, and then doing first connections. It says some of the stuff I've seen says hit second level. Connections, not first level. Um and then just you know hitting them on their DMs, just saying, hey guys, I got these two podcasts, I got this. I'm you know, letting people know I'm an interesting guy. And then going out.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

I was tracking that motion.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Yeah, if you're if you're interested, you know, I do a little coaching too. If you want, if you don't, you know, please pass it along to somebody else. I think that's one of the methods I'm doing now is like not just asking people directly, but to go, hey, if you know somebody that might be interested, that's that's that's a common technique.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

That's good.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

Yeah, and uh yeah, I'm not I've only done it like three days so far. Um now I'm not doing any paid marketing yet, but I have also been approached by a few people that uh build systems like LinkedIn marketing systems. So you pay them, it could be three thousand, it could be five thousand, it could be nine thousand dollars to build this LinkedIn marketing system, and then once it's up and running, they charge you like three hundred dollars a month to keep the leads flowing in your uh in your network or you can't kind of hold my nose at those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Yeah, I wanted to see what you thought about some of those.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

I mean, look, number one, LinkedIn does not like third party programs, Chrome extensions, anything that tries to automate LinkedIn. So I would I would just advise you make sure if you whoever you align with, they don't do that. No matter what they tell you. Oh no, we fly under the radar and you'll be fine. No, no, no, you won't. It's just a matter of time before they they they nab you. And and it all it all depends on what your goals are. The way I teach it and the way I operate it, it's about relationship cultivation. And that's not just hammering people on DMs. It's a slow burn. You gotta be able to put value out there. You gotta be able to treat LinkedIn like your own, it's your own television station. And what do TV stations have? They don't just run commercials, they have programs. Okay, you have podcasts you're putting out there, all that's that's perfect. But what else builds you know the Tony Bradshaw personal brand? What, what, what, who are you? Not just what do you do? Put content out there that talks about who you are. I've heard a lot of things just talking to you, kids in private school, Dave Ramsey. There's these little nuggets that if I'm coaching you and I'm like, oh man, you got to be doing this, that, and the other. But and be willing to hammer that rock without it splitting for a while, because that's what it takes. Take it from a guy that swung that hammer for eons. And now, you know, the effect you want is to have inbound. People, I'm interested. I just before I got on this uh podcast with you, I spoke to a woman, and the call started off with I've been following you for a while on LinkedIn and I wanted to get more information. That is other than that's the second best phone call you could ever get in sales. First one is I want to hire you. But the second one is I've been following you and I want more information. I didn't have to pay a nickel for that. That and I didn't have to hire a third party company from that. And I explained to her. I said, Now let me make sure I understand what you just said. You've been following me for a while. Yes? Yes. She even used the words, you made me stop the scroll. I'll say, that's number two. I made you stop the scroll. And I said, How many times did I email you or DM you or cold call you and ask you, do you need a coach? She said, Zero. I said, okay, so let me make sure I have this straight. You followed me for a while. I made you stop the scroll. I didn't solicit you, and you called me for business. She said, Yes. I said, so I've already proven what I do works. I'm going to teach you to do the same thing that you just did for me. And usually that right then it's like, where do I sign? It's like there's you can't dispute that. And I and I take those calls every week. It's a beautiful thing, man. It's a beautiful thing. It's a turkey shoot, buddy. It's a turkey shoot. I'm very fortunate. But I will say it took years of effort of consistently showing up. And I still do. I post on LinkedIn sometimes six, seven times a day. I'm not just the posting. Keep in mind the network growth, the interaction, commenting, DMing people. I use all that stuff all the time. And it's that collection of that aggregate of action that causes LinkedIn to bear fruit for you.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Gotcha. So the consistency, the posting. Now, when you're posting, what are you posting? You post some written content, you post some video content, you posting audio. Do you do uh what do they call these uh nameless brand posting? Do you do any of that kind of stuff? I have a faceless brand, faceless.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

I'm all over the place. I have videos that'll be me talking. I'll have memes that have my face. I'll have motion graphic videos that make some sort of point with text on a creative background. I'll have photo posts that aren't me. You know, I'll give you an example. I have a post of that type of post. I have a post coming out next week. In the voiceover business, a lot of people in the voiceover business tend to get stuck talking about voiceover, voiceover, voiceover. It's like Marsha, Marsha, Marsha from the Brady Bunch. You know, voiceover, voiceover. So my post is a picture of a smurf. And if you remember the Smurfs, they use the word smurf to substitute every other word. A smurfy good time. Let's smurf out over to the pool. And I make the point that look, dude, you sound like the Smurfs because you can't talk about anything else but voiceover. Tell me something else that I don't know. So that'll just that's that's one example. I have testimonial content I put up. I have um I write mini blogs all the time. My my content tends to be mini blog style. And I'm very critical of the industry. I'm critical of people that are lazy or that are complacent. So I'm always calling people out for that. Um I have a podcast too. I'm not the host. I'm the sort of the executive producer that I have a host and that we interview people, so I'll put out promo content for that. But um, it's all over the board. I'm I my attitude is is take the fire hose out, boom, turn it on and just spray it, man. Spray it. Get well Gary Vaynerchuk, please tell me you know that name. Okay, Gary Vaynerchuk puts out content now and says you should be posting 50 times a week.

unknown 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Fifty times a week. And that's a guy who basically did that to grow his business.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Now he's saying uh when I was at Dave's, uh one of the things Dave did was gave out Gary's book, uh Jab Jab Right Hook, which was like uh it's probably like 2009, 10, 11, 12, something like that. And then uh gave that out, and then we had Gary speak at one of Dave's events up in New York. How cool. Which was cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh and then uh so what I've done is I really didn't do social media that much until this year. I just started this year just going, okay, this is my deal, I gotta do this. So I try to post one to three times a day right now across uh Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I got shorts I use on YouTube and TikTok and then off the podcast, so they're there's you know just generic uh AI-based uh sixty second clips, which are cool. But it's something, right? Because you gotta develop these muscles, guys. You guys listen to the show. You know, you may not want you may I don't have time to do social media. You don't have time not to do social media, you need to do it. It doesn't take that long, really. You're talking about a few minutes a day uh to actually put down I mean you could waste so much time just watching the freaking news or scrolling on YouTube or scrolling on Facebook, like you're burning that time somewhere. Use it somewhere productive, you know, get something going. And it takes a little while to get momentum. It took me uh on Instagram, Corey, I was just hung up at a 850 and uh I just couldn't get past 850 followers on Instagram, man. It was like up to eight fifty down to eight fifty forty five, up to eight fifty down to eight forty five. Kept going back and forth, and then more recently I broke through the eight fifty, and now it's it's starting to climb a little bit. My YouTube channel's starting to climb. Uh I'm only at a hundred subscribers on YouTube. YouTube, but I was at sixty-three forever. And then now it's a hundred, right? There you go. You just gotta keep doing it. You gotta keep doing it by degrees, keep moving on on that. So talk to me a little bit about some of the um things, not just posting inside of LinkedIn, but LinkedIn has got a whole plethora of tools in there. There's this hiring recruiting system technology that they have that uh recruiters use. What are some of the other things you're familiar with inside of LinkedIn that somebody might want to try to leverage?

SPEAKER_01 29:01

I mean, there's several tiers that LinkedIn will try to sell you of their premium services, sales navigator, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I always advocate for people to lean. If you're a solopreneur, you want to use some the version of LinkedIn called LinkedIn Premium Business, which will allow you to basically, I don't want to use the word unlimited, but you don't get capped as quickly onto how many people you contact, how many custom notes you send out, et cetera. It doesn't cloak as much information when it says someone's looking at your profile. You know, if you don't have premium, you click on that, you see a silhouette, and this says someone from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. If you you have LinkedIn Premium Business, it gives you the person's name, photo, link, etc. I would say the number one most underutilized function on LinkedIn that you should be using if you're a solopreneur and you're trying to build your personal brand and grow your business is the ability to send audio and video messages through the DMs. If you don't know how to do that, learn. Once you learn, do it every day because you will get people that will respond to you simply because they don't, they've never seen that before. They say, I didn't know you could do that. That's pretty cool. And then you'll get a little conversation going. So that that's that's look, I gave you that. That's some gold mugg information right there, man.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah, yeah. So is that is that available to anybody, or do you have to be a premium?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

You don't have to be premium to use that. Okay, so you just use that unless you're connected to somebody.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Yo, so you got to be already a meet, a meeting with yeah, because when we were talking earlier, I was just thinking, you know, I'm sitting in out these text approaches on DM. I'm like, man, I'd just look at their name. Hey, Mike, how are you doing today? Send them a video that's like telling them versus reading it, making them read it. It's just a lot more energy. And I probably need to do that. Just cut, you know, cut 10, 20 videos, pop, pop, pop, get them out the door.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

I mean, you think about it, and I tell people, you know, and this might sound funny, but when you connect with someone of substance that has a following, that has a successful business on social media, and you're just connected to them, and you just see that avatar and that name and their little bit of content, there's a little, there's a little bit of that kind of guy's kind of a celebrity. Okay. And, you know, like I said, not everybody's comfortable with that description. But think about it, if you're watching your favorite television show and the star of the show sends you a custom audio or video message right to your inbox, you're gonna feel pretty damn warm and fuzzy about that. Um, not to mention, when you send an audio or a video message on LinkedIn, when you send a normal DM, everybody sees black and you know, black text on a white background. It's very easy for things to get lost in the shuffle or ignored uh or skipped over. But when you send an audio or video message, the audio messages have a big bright blue horizontal bar with a play icon in the middle. The audio messages have a full-fledged thumbnail with a play icon in the middle. And look, in 2026, we're all Pavlov's dogs. When you see a media file come over with a triangle in the middle, what are you gonna do? You're gonna press play. You're gonna be curious. What is that? And that's half the battle. Getting your message consumed in the first place. And just this simple technique helps to increase the response rate exponentially. And you know what a typical email response rate is?

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Mine's pretty low.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

2%? Probably like 2% is the average. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Well, yeah, I'm getting open rates of about 10%, click-through rates about like half a percent.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

So, you know, the the response rate that my clients get through using the system that I teach on the low end 15% on the high end up.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

By implementing these messages the way I teach it.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

Yeah, that's wonderful, man. That's great. So, what is that? Let's talk about your coaching model right now, because you talk about marketing business coaching. You got life and uh, what'd you call it? Performance coaching. High performance, yes. High performance coaching. So let's talk through that a little bit. Like, what do you get when somebody works with you along one of those four things?

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Sure. So, I mean, the the flavor of the coaching might be different, but the structure is the same. So when people engage with me and they want to work with me, they the minimum obligation is between three and five months, months. I have a few different packages at different price levels depending on which you pick. And during that uh, you know, three to five months, we would be on the phone a couple of times a month, every other week, one-on-one, 20 to 30 minutes. I usually come to that phone call with a pre-planned out agenda. We're tracking certain things, we're handling, achieving certain goals. I give you homework, there are certain tutorials, click this, do that. How is this going? There's post-game analysis of certain situations. Everybody's a little different, their starting points are a little different. And then in between all those coaching calls, folks have as needed text, email, DM access to me throughout the entire uh three to five months. It's not just business hours, it's not just uh weekdays. My phone starts going off about 3:30, 4 a.m. Pacific time, dinging, pinging, ringing all the way until eight, nine o'clock uh Pacific time, where I'm usually attending to a message. So most of my clients have as needed access to me all the time where we're handling something, because I always like to tell them, you know, we're doing this as a team. Yes, I'm your coach. Yes, you're paying me, you're my client, but no, we're teammates. And in order for to be teammates, we gotta be on the field together. So if you don't pull that lever and you don't communicate with me, and I don't know what's broken, I can't fix it. So, folks are that's how that's usually how our coaching works. I have some clients that have been with me several years. Most clients are with me about nine months, but there are plenty of those I've had that have done their minimum obligation. And quite honestly, it's most of it's financially. They'll say, Well, I can't afford to go another round. I got what I got, thank you. And we wish them well and part as friends.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

That's great. So, what about on the marketing side when you're working with somebody around like say LinkedIn marketing? Is LinkedIn your primary specialty that you focus on?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yes. I mean, that's kind of that that's the focus. I don't want to say it's uh the only thing we talk about. I mean, we'll talk about Instagram, we'll talk about YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, X. It all LinkedIn usually ends up being the hub where all the spokes of these other platforms they kind of spring off from that. I just had too much success with LinkedIn, and so do my clients not to start there. It just that's the sweet spot.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

Well, I mean, it's a business focus. You can really segment in the professional world what you need to get after. You're not trying to sell like a product, you're trying to find a sell a professional service.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Well, and that I'm trying to to give people tools and tasks and tips that they can take care of themselves, you know, and the this this platform like LinkedIn, it's just like I said, it's it's so hot, it's so beneficial if you just know how to use it right. And most folks think they do, but they don't.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah. Including me, even though I've been in LinkedIn for a while. So I'm just now starting to leverage it. But I've got a pretty decent following too on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Something tells me you'll be all right.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Well, I mean, now that you it's uh part of it's just like deciding to do it, right? You just gotta be like, all right, I gotta do this, and then you go and you do it. And that's what I'm you know, kind of working on this year. I've kind of been as an entrepreneur been dabbling for for several years, trying to figure it out, and then this year I'm like, no, this is my breakthrough year. This is gonna be it. It's ten years since I left Dave Ramsey's office and that that happens May 2nd, that'll be my tenth year. Congratulations. Yeah, and uh I'm just like all right, this is it. I'm gonna do have some breakthrough this year, hit another level. I used to make uh uh seven figures when I worked for Ramsey. And so since I left Ramsey's, I hadn't made that It's been the opposite of that. So yeah, and uh this year I'm like, you know what? I wanna I wanna get back to seven figures again. I want to be there, I want to spoil my family, spoil my wife, take her on trips. Uh you know, live just such more free life. And uh look, I can tell you, man, it takes a while. It takes a while.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

LinkedIn has allowed me, you know, I make a very nice living. I'm not a rich man, but I answer to no one, I make my own schedule. I work maybe 15 hours a week. I'm only 53 years old, and I no longer have to schedule my life around my work. It's the other way around.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Very free. Yeah. That ought to be the name of this. How to get free with Corey Disson.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

I talk about three letters. QTL. You ever heard of QTL?

SPEAKER_02 37:34

No, no. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 37:35

QTL stands for Quality Time Left. That is the currency that I spend every day, is that I get to spend time with my wife every day. You know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, should I choose. We can take a walk to the beach if we want, whenever we want. We're jumping on a plane on Saturday morning. We just got the reservations two days ago. We I don't have to repeat. Where are you going? I am going to Pennsylvania to watch my son, who is a minor league baseball player, who opens his homestand next week. He's in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, so we always make it a point to uh catch his first uh week of home games. We're just he's in his fifth year in the system, so we're looking forward to seeing him. So it's not like I'm going to some exotic location. Believe me, Reading, Pennsylvania is not exotic. But it'll be fun to see my son.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Yeah, that's wonderful, wonderful. Well, Corey, man, it's been a pleasure having you on. Uh what I like to ask uh people, the guests that are on the show, what are the two best business books that you've read that you'd recommend to the audience?

SPEAKER_01 38:36

Easy. The first one's called Habits of a Champion, written by Dana Cavallia. Dana Cavallia was the uh strength and conditioning coach for the New York Yankees for about a dozen years. And I also, he was my coach, so I'm a little biased. But that book was an easy read, a lot of impactful stuff in there. And the other book would be uh Confessions of a Serial Salesman. That's by Steve Neudelberg. And earlier in our discussion, I don't remember if it was part of the pre-interview or part of the actual interview, I told you about a guy who I filed on LinkedIn and I reached out and said, Will you take my call? That's the guy. And he sent me his book, and uh he and I still communicate several times per week now. Big time influence on me. But yeah, those are two books that you read them. I mean, aside from reading mine, that would be choice number one, of course, going the distance. But I'm a little biased. But if you're not going to read mine, go read those two.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

All right, so one more time. Uh Habits of a Champion by Dana Cavalier.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

C-A-V-A-L-E-A, Cavalier.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

And Confessions of a Serial Salesman by Steve Needleberg.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Noodleberg. N-U-D. I think it's E-L B E R G, Steve Noodleberg.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

Okay, awesome, man. Corey, welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being on the show, sharing your wisdom. You got me fired up about LinkedIn. I'm ready to get off the call with you. Go hit the sales uh DMs on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Go get it. That's what we say around here. It's go get it nation. So go get it, Tony. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

All right, take care.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

All right, buddy.