Russ Johns  0:01   Welcome to the pirate broadcast, where we interview interesting people doing interesting things where you can expand your connections, your community. Kindness is cool and smiles are free. And let's get this party started. 
Russ Johns  0:19   Holy cow. Holy cow. It looks like we are another amazing day. So I just wanted to reach out to everyone and let you know that pirate broadcast. We've got amazing individuals here, interesting people doing interesting things. And today we have Marc in the room. And we're going to be talking a little bit about writing books, maybe some LinkedIn activity, nuggets of knowledge all the way around maybe some branding activity. So let's let's get it started. And Marc Good morning. How are you? this fine day are good. Great, whoever's watching this. 
Marc Halpert  0:54    I am great. And thank you for asking. I speak to a lot of people all the time and a lot of them are very down about About the pandemic and I got lots of ideas about how to make life better for yourself. So we can touch on that too.  
Russ Johns  1:06   Well, absolutely, you know, I see it as an opportunity. I mean, I've been a remote worker for over a decade. And, you know, it's, I enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to be flexible in my time and everything that goes around that idea, that concept in and you know, I've designed my life around that so I could do that. And a lot of people are, I think, waking up to the idea that it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not something that's a bad choice or, you know, it's it's an opportunity to learn some new skills. It's an opportunity to grow and expand and actually pay attention to what you want in life. And so it's really amazing. If you look at it as an opportunity, you know, so don't be a victim. Look at what you can accomplish with what you have. So that's, that's my position.  
Marc Halpert  2:01   So I agree with you. I agree with you. I'm going on 19 years in my basement. I mean, I think the first couple of months, back in September 2001 were really weird because I opened my business and two days later, we had 911. So not only was I reeling from the fact that all the interpersonal contact I had in my big corporate life, people coming to me, I was going to them, I was on a phone, you know, it did all sorts of things with people that had to help me. I suddenly was very, very alone. And then 911 came, and I'm not looking for pity because I've obviously survived and thrived, but no one was doing anything new. So this guy who had this great idea about electronic payments, and we're going to take credit cards and ACH online and we're going to get you paid no, no one was interested. No one had no one had any interest in talking to me. So everybody's licking their wounds. Everybody's like feeling horrible. And then we eventually came out of it like we will hope come out of this. Yeah, yeah, this is not a finite event. This isn't potentially infinite event or much more infinite event. So, I have been a big advocate of what I learned in 911. And that is market your butt off. Now.  
Russ Johns  3:18   Now is not the time to stop. 
Marc Halpert  3:21   Right? Because when we come out of this, you're gonna be so much better prepared than your competitors are who have been licking their wounds. So I wrote a blog post on that called market your butt off, you should be out there talking to like me talking to you, and everybody listens to you. I mean, through referral, I came to you, I would never have found you otherwise. And that's the beauty of marketing your butt off thing,  
Russ Johns  3:45   showing up every day doing the work. So there's a reason I actually show up every day five days a week and do this show. And also a lot of people have asked me to actually keep going back and doing the Two Minute Tips. I used to do Two Minute Tips every night, before I shut my computer off. And just a little word of wisdom or whatever was on my mind. And a lot of people would send me messages, you know, saying, Hey, I appreciate it. And you're just putting yourself out there on a regular basis. And just helping adding value producing something of value to the world, I think is, allowing you to keep top of mind as well as you know, the fact that you can help them in their business and like yourself, ach, credit card transactions, all of these things are, are part of the process. And I think it's important for us to understand that it's, it's critical that we pay attention to what we want to put out there and how we want to show up and you've written books.  
Marc Halpert  4:48   If you don't help people, they won't read you. All right, you can pontificate all you want about your view of the world, but everybody else's view of the world. Last night I was I blog every day. I think we've talked about this. I blog every single day on a LinkedIn nugget just so the audience understands. Yes, I started out as credit card electronic payments guy. After 911 I realized it really needed to market my business especially in the 07'-08' recession. I found LinkedIn I am absorbed it I embraced it. I decided I was teaching could teach it better than the people teaching me. So being the lack, you know, kind of laid out laid back type of guy. I said, I'm gonna go do this. I'm going to go teach people how to use LinkedIn and a second career, concurrent career was born. Last night, I was writing a blog piece about something I had witnessed during the day and I do this I find amazing stuff every day. And a guy from Gambia thanked me for what I had written the day before, so I'm having an effect. I know another story. I love to tell about having effect that you never know when you have an effect on someone. 
Marc Halpert  6:00   Until they actually let you know and it can come in really, really crazy ways is that I wrote a blog piece. This is a couple of years ago and a woman in Iran emailed me in Farsi now I don't read Farsi. But I have a friend in New York who reads Farsi. He's Persian. And he read to me in English, what translation was, this is fantastic. We do not get people talking to us like this. Here in my country. I really appreciate what you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. heartfelt thank you. Yeah. And I loved it because it meant that look, not every blog post hits a home run some pretty good. And some of them people are nice enough to guest blog with me and get another audience. But for me, I do it because it helps other people and you never know where it's going to help.  
Russ Johns  6:52   Well, let's go down. Let's go down the LinkedIn path a little bit because there's a lot of changes there recently arriving and continue to arrive like polls, I created a poll the other day I don't know that it's rolled out completely however I was fortunate enough to have a poll and it seems like it's a good idea however I could see where it could get really noisy in the feed  
Marc Halpert  7:22   I am so glad you said that because if I get another poll I'm going to scream yeah everybody almost everybody at least in the US got polls I mean, it's pretty they have weird look, I don't work for LinkedIn so I can be a little bit critical here but and constructively critical because you know, it's a lot of good but nonetheless I'm I'm sick of polls. I mean, really? Yes. No polls, or Well, how many emails do I receive because a it helps me be It does. It helps other people. I mean, really, can we be a little bit more scientific here? A little bit more professional here. So I have polls. I'm not using them because 
Marc Halpert  8:00   We'll use polls when it's effective. It's like when native video came out on your iPhone app for, for LinkedIn. Everybody's doing native videos. Hi, I'm here at the grocery store. Hi, I'm here at the drugstore. Hi, you're driving me crazy. Stop it already. But I use it effectively and infrequently. Because it's something different. So this so many changes going on, which is what we were saying before we started. So many changes that since I wrote my first book back in 2017, I can about double the second edition, which I'm about to start writing, because there's so much new stuff. Yeah, foreword of the book says I will never be able to tell you everything about LinkedIn and this book because it will change even before this book has been published. But this is the best high level knowledge about what you need to know in order to use LinkedIn well, and that's sort of where I go. It's sort of a field guide for professional practitioners so that they can pretty much deal with anything that they come across. 
Russ Johns  9:00   Yeah, so let me ask you this, what features that have been released in the last year do you really appreciate?  
Marc Halpert  9:12   Ah, one is I really appreciate is the fact that you can put 2600 characters now, in your intro, they finally arrived on a name for the intro about intro to this that you know, it's like crazy. So now you can do 2600 characters, which is 600 more characters, which is a tremendous amount of work. Yeah, face and I feel my about with what people have said about me. I can tell you all day long about me until you're sick of hearing about me. But if someone else tells you what has been unsolicited thank yous for a session I gave how I help them personally in a coaching session, whatever. And they send me some stuff I only curate the best of the best. So I throw it in there is 600 more spaces that I could say good stuff that people have said about Recently, so I know that 
Marc Halpert  10:03   I appreciate the fact that it's easier to add content than ever before. You know how to add content appropriately?  
Russ Johns  10:15   What do you mean by that? 
Marc Halpert  10:18   You can like stuff all day long. I wish they take likes off of LinkedIn. Because that is so lame. It is. So hit and run type of thing. If you like something, why do you like it? So comment why you like it? Yeah, or that you like it because and then the other thing you can curate other people's material and say why you like it, or why you agree with all the point number five, whatever it is, or you can write original material on your own, called an order. And you have no balance, and that goes to everybody in the world. And that's how the woman Iran wrote back to me and why this guy Gambia liked it. So this There's so many ways to do it, you can attach your blog to LinkedIn, you can have actual new content, going to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all at the same time. Set your watch am every morning eastern time, you're going to get my view of the world with a LinkedIn twist that's a nugget of help for you. So you're gonna get it in all different places. So it's so much better now easier now to add high level intelligent content than just these kudos and it'll clap your hands and all the other stuff that they added which drives me nuts which is Facebook and my Yeah, just gonna say I have no opinions on this at all. You can tell 
Russ Johns  11:41   Well, tell us how you really feel you know, the reality is is you know, I'm I have LinkedIn live in one of the Roger Wilkerson and I were talking one day and hats off to Roger and Bobby, the bear and We were talking about because I come from a broadcasting background and the pirate broadcast was exactly that. It was, it was I didn't have LinkedIn live. So I was going for LinkedIn live. So we started this little campaign. And then I started streaming to YouTube, and then bringing that over as a LinkedIn live event, even before I had LinkedIn live, and I had native video and one of the frustrations I had with the native video on initially was I wanted to shoot landscape I didn't want to shoot portrait I wanted to shoot landscape. And initially when it first came out, all my videos were upside down. 
Russ Johns  12:39   So I went through this whole phase of shooting upside down videos for a long time because like just just to mess with the whole LinkedIn ecosystem and what it was kind of fun it you know, it was it was a process and it's just like, I would love to go back and have some of those you know, see some of those videos. 
Russ Johns  12:59   Now, it's like, you know, in the feed just continues to grow and evolve and everything that goes along with it. And now with LinkedIn live, they're not really rolling out a lot. And they're already announcing stories. So I'm not really sure how that's going to evolve,  
Marc Halpert  13:16   stories are coming. They're being tested in Brazil and the Netherlands right now is another one of the wacky things that LinkedIn does. They don't test on LinkedIn experts like me, to help them understand where the value is they just throwing it out to Brazil, and the Netherlands. They test a lot. I talked to a lot of to some of my UK counterparts, they get stuff well before we'll ever see it. 
Marc Halpert  13:40   We never actually see in the United States and they throw away. I appreciate the fact that they're testing and they're doing new things, which they would take, if you're listening. I take a little bit more respect of the LinkedIn experts, this 475 of us who speak on a regular basis and we add value to each other. It's like it's what I call a co op petition.  
Russ Johns  13:59   Really Absolutely.  
Marc Halpert  14:01   But we cooperate in a really wonderful way. And it would be so much better. I don't have LinkedIn live. I can't get it. I've asked for three times, they for some reason have not deemed me appropriate. And I was happy in a chat that we had amongst ourselves last week that there were other LinkedIn experts who didn't have LinkedIn live. Also, they're equally as frustrated. What this too much use of LinkedIn live like this too much use of polls. It's like the next shiny Penny is the one everybody wants to stop and pick up. And you know, folks, you got lots of tools, use them appropriately. Now, think of learning how to use it, because it's pretty simple to use. Just use them effectively.  
Russ Johns  14:40   Yeah, yeah. Well, I am glad. And I'm fortunate that I have LinkedIn live. And although it looks like today's show, LinkedIn isn't connecting to stream yard so I'm streaming to Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube. So How ironic that we're talking about LinkedIn. And we're not even able to stream to LinkedIn today. So and it happens on occasions, LinkedIn will do an update upgrade or something to their, to their environment and and then I have to reconnect everything. And because they're they're the only platform I know of that doesn't have a native way of streaming video directly to the platform.  
Marc Halpert  15:26   Well, you know, that's funny you say that and this happened again at that same get together of us LinkedIn experts, but hey, do you ever see you know, something on LinkedIn one day and you go teach a class and you want to show them something on LinkedIn, it's not there anymore. And it's gone. Like this huge? Yes. Yes. That happens to me all the time. It happened to me three days ago, and I look like an idiot in front of a bunch of people and it's there are then it's gone. Yesterday, folks. Really? I didn't see it. I'm not making this stuff up. Yeah, it was pretty crazy.  
Marc Halpert  15:56   But um, they you know, they have gigantic servers and I think 11 or 12 different places around the globe. You never know what server you're on. So I may be teaching somebody one on one. Okay, refresh your screen. He says I did. I didn't know I don't see it says to refresh the screen again, we'll go to another server, we'll just keep finding the server that we can all be we're on the same server together. And it'll be quite a game and they look at me like, Yeah, you got it together, buddy. You're in pretty sad shape. Yeah. 
Marc Halpert  16:25   Technology is an inefficient art.  
Russ Johns  16:28   Well, and it's and it's always evolving, it's always changing. So expect the unexpected, enjoy the ride, and work it with gratitude. That's, you know, that's what we got to say. So I want to dig into your book, though. I mean, you know, expanding this book from the first version to the second version, what do you anticipate that is going to be evolving through this process for Marc I mean, you know, it's, it's a process and you know, you got a lot of good content already. So it's Are you gonna pull from the resources or start a fresh pen?  
Marc Halpert  17:04   No, I'm gonna pull from the resources. Because, you know, as I read my book, it's me speaking to you. It's my style, a very direct conversation. And, you know, it's published by the American Bar Association. They came to me and asked me to write the books, I was really flattered. I'm not a lawyer. And I said to him, you know, I'd love to do this, but I just want to write for lawyers. And I've been looked at like that before. And I said, I want to go beyond just lawyers. I want to go to lawyers who also do other things.  
Marc Halpert  17:34   Yeah, like an executive chef, who's also a lawyer, like a this and like that, and like an architect is also a lawyer. And they said, Well, that's interesting. We could do that. I said, in multi-preneurs, people who are entrepreneurs in multiple areas who might have been trained in the law. So that's the way I wrote the book. And that is brought for me as I've met more people whose work people have come my way. Yeah, I'm so I'm going to Add a lot of new fresh ideas that I've evolved myself. 
Marc Halpert  18:05    Like, don't just like stuff. I mean, two years ago, we were all just liking stuff. And that was good enough. But you know, let's talk about adding value to each other's lives. And then it goes a little bit beyond the mechanics to more of the why you do what you do that Simon Sinek why, which is a really big piece of my life. I'm also going to add a couple of chapters on there already is a chapter there guess written by a woman who wrote it on legal ethics, because lawyers have definite ethics considerations by the bar associations that needs an upgrade update, because that's an evolving science as well. But I have two other chapters. And I'm not going to tell you I'm going to leave everybody suspense, Partly because the Bar Association and I have yet to work out all the details, but I have one person I want to write about marketing and another person I want to write about how to work with recruiters. 
Marc Halpert  19:09   They will be guest chapters from people who are recognized experts in the field. There's room for plenty of people to talk in my book, because I don't own all the deed, all the ideas and the book is also if you've looked at it is stylistically sidebars on the side of every major point where somebody says, you know, that guy Mark said, Well, let me tell you how that really helped me. So it reinforces again, like I was saying earlier in my in the 2600 character about section. It's all about not just what I say but what other people say. Yeah, that really does work. It really was good.  
Russ Johns  19:40   Yeah. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to some of the people. 
Russ Johns  19:46   Wendy's here. Wendy she missed yesterday because she was in a different time zone. Oh, dang. Gabriel. I don't know if you follow Gabriel. He does. made from scratch. broadcast. He he does it on the evening. He's an amazing individual that does that. So, oh, my nephew. So I appreciate that. So I everybody's back. And, you know, I just want to thank everyone that that drops in on the pirate broadcast and and you know, Marc here is adding value. He's he's, you know producing content every day and doing things that a lot of us are not willing or able or have an interest in producing content. So hats off to you applaud you for the consistent content that you produce mark. And it's really amazing to me because I love creating content. You know, my format is typically and I've written thousands of blogs and posts and everything. And I do enjoy and appreciate video and I would really like to see LinkedIn evolve their Video. 
Russ Johns  21:00   I'm not really sure I'm gonna ask the expert here now, how do you see as a branding in, somebody that's from a branding mindset, best going to leverage stories in LinkedIn when they come out? 
Marc Halpert  21:18   Well, if you're not already telling stories on LinkedIn now you're missing a great opportunity. Because so many people come across your profile and just read it looks like copy, paste, resume, you know your resume on electrons, as I like to say, factoids, boring stuff, no bullet point, you know, just tell a story. So brand yourself and talk to the audience using that wonderful pronoun I and find a website. It's on the Muse.com, called 185 power verbs. It's written for resume writers, but it's like giving a oral presentation to a business professional group, get rid of the brand, dumbness of using was, had, made, did, we or maybe.   
Marc Halpert  22:07   All the time, not Mr. Halper does no one wants to deal with Mr. Halpert attorneys out there. All right, that's what I say, you know, not Marc us then it's an out of body experience. I don't talk about myself. Russ. Marc says this Marc says that it's weird in this environment. So we've come in much more informal social media, make it social, make it interactive, post something and say what do you think? Yeah, action. Do you agree with me? Have you seen that to be the case? Don't be afraid to give your opinions because you earned your stripes. Yeah, all these things that you can do to make yourself a brand because you are a brand as people go down the aisle in the grocery store. Remember when you stop and go the aisle in the grocery anyway, and they go to the cereal aisle, every single box of cereal basically tastes the same. It's made of the same junk. And it's sweet and sparkly and all that stuff. And it has a different cover box to make you want to pick it up that didn't profile.  
Marc Halpert  23:15   When you want to pick up your profile, my profile your profile, you looked at mine, I saw that I looked at yours. Yeah, I want to know more about what's in the box, not the shiny stuff on the outside. Yeah, thank you home. You want me to try you. You want to come back and buy you again. You want me to refer you? I want you to refer me. And this is hey, I tried this box of Russ Johns. It was great stuff. I'd like Russ to speak to my friend so and so. And this is how we socially evolved. Is this radical stuff. 
Russ Johns  23:50    I mean, you probably know it's life 101 it's relationships. It's the way that we actually have conversations In real life, right,  
Marc Halpert  24:01   it's gonna be out of us. We're afraid to talk about ourselves in an active manner where people will say, I can appreciate this person's pride in the 40 years of work he's done and what he's learned in all those days, all those years. So it's been beat out of us. People are scared to death about talking about themselves. This is the time to talk about yourself in a pandemic. So you're marketing your butt off, you come across in a fresh manner. So when we come out of this people are ready to sample the cereal, called Russ Johns, or what ever the cereal name is. 
Russ Johns  24:37   or Marc and his book, to the to the attorneys that are chef's, you can have a little above on the side have a big breakfast, okay? 
Russ Johns  24:47   co-op etition, right. There's plenty to go around. I always tell people you can never run out of abundance, right? 
Marc Halpert  24:56   It's infinite. It's infinite. And it's the degree To which you are amazing, and you know it, but you have to look amazing 
Marc Halpert  25:06   in your LinkedIn profile because it's marketing. You won't be amazinger then maybe this little tiny person inside who's afraid to talk about himself. Or maybe it's amazinger than your competition. Because when Russ refers me to somebody and there's a shortlist of four people, if they fall in, like with my LinkedIn profile, then when they call me or email me to qualify me for that final list, they fall in love with me for that list. Yeah, it's just common sense. But we've lost the ability to think clearly that way.  
Russ Johns  25:42   Yeah, I think a lot of people and it's, I think it's killing us slowly with comparison. You know, seeing somebody else's journey and where they are, they are the moment in thinking that you have to be where they are. And it's like, No, You are exactly where you need to be right now. You know, go on your own journey, do your own thing, put yourself out there and produce results, put some value out to the world, you will be seen there is an audience. It's just like the person that wrote you from Iran. You know, it's if that person took the time to do that, you know, there's multiple, there's multiples of others that have not taken the time to write anything.  
Marc Halpert  26:28   Well, she took a huge risk. Yeah, this is what my friend in New York said, I mean, this is amazing. This got to you. Yeah. And then using that I knew what to do with it. You know, it's also to riff a little bit on what you were talking about. We have amazing paths. We learned a lot I did many years in corporate, I learned a lot of things in corporate. Those are experience cards in my back pocket, as I need to pull out that experience card for something I'm doing now, where I learned how to give have oral presentations and talk to people I can't physically touch but I can see what I trained myself and I pull out my experience cards all the time now in the present. And those experience cards will only get better if they go into my future. So I always tell people to write their LinkedIn profile from the past makes me who I am today, who I am today indicates where I want to go in my future. And I'm ready, willing and able, folks, let's go for  
Russ Johns  27:25   awesome awesome. 
Russ Johns  27:27   So what's one nugget of knowledge you want to leave with the with the Pirate community that is going to allow them to improve their day to day? 
Marc Halpert  27:38   If you're not getting business inquiries from LinkedIn, and you're not adding to the conversation on LinkedIn, you're wasting the entire real estate you take up in LinkedIn. Use it is it effectively use it efficiently? Are you getting gauging amazinger be that person that talks about this is why I do what I do and you We'll tell a story that your competitors can't tell. And then you will find the recognition. And hopefully the business implications will rise as a result. But don't complain. If you're not getting anything from LinkedIn, because it's not on anybody, yourself to better your own situation. 
Russ Johns  28:19   It's just a tool, use it to your advantage, use it, use it, and just use it.  
Marc Halpert  28:25   Well, it's a power tool, you get our power tool, if you use it incorrectly, but you can do amazing things with the power tool when you use it properly.  
Russ Johns  28:33   Oh, I made some amazing connections. I just really enjoy and appreciate some of the people that I've met on LinkedIn and through LinkedIn and you know, met them in person and eventually, you know, I have friends that I could, people that are really close in my life that I met through LinkedIn and most of my businesses has been generated through connections on LinkedIn and building relationships. So a lot of my businesses referral business  
Marc Halpert  29:03   If you can do it and I can do it everybody else is listening in can do it. You just have to want to and if when you don't want to when you think no one really cares what I think you may as well just shut shop. I mean, it's just not worth it. Who wants to listen to somebody who doesn't believe in themselves? Yeah. I mean this this, this is strange for people to say, I am amazing I you know, that's not what I'm telling you to do. What I'm telling you to do is to just prove your value by being in front of who you are today and people will listen to the words you use and the way you express it.  
Russ Johns  29:34   Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, Mark, thank you so much for being here. And as always, you know, we We love sharing interesting people doing interesting things. Congratulations on the book, look forward to a launch. You know, keep us posted on that in the pirate community. Make sure that we're connecting. If you're not connected with Mark, reach out, tell him Russ Sent you say you're a pirate, letting Know that you're you're involved and engaged in the community.  
Marc Halpert  30:03   Can I add to that quickly because in touch on, follow me on LinkedIn, if I haven't met you and go to business with you, once I get that level and this is just my thing, once they get that level of comfort after we that's why you and I spoke on the phone before I connected to you, I just like to gauge what I can do to help you. As opposed to whether there's there's a connection instantaneous, because it rarely is you have to find that connection. And then we could possibly Connect down the road. Yeah. Okay.  
Russ Johns  30:34   Yeah, and that's a great tip. And a lot of people are very wary. I mean, we could go on another another hour about, you know, bad practices that people have  
Russ Johns  30:49   a couple hours. 
Marc Halpert  30:52   But you know, another show First, I want you to do right and so, you know, that's the coach in May. It's just like, try to do better but Let's go a different route because you can do better than that. Except more positive spent. Yeah.  
Russ Johns  31:05   Well, as always, thank you so much, Marc. And 
Russ Johns  31:09   you know, kindness is cool. smiles are free. Yeah. And you enjoy the day. 
Marc Halpert  31:16   Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. 
Russ Johns  31:18   Take care. 
Russ Johns  31:20   Thank you for joining the pirate broadcast. If you found this content valuable, please like, comment and share it across your social media channels. I would love the opportunity to help others grow in their business. The pirate syndicate is a platform where you show up we produce the show. It's that easy. If you want to be seen be heard and be talked about. Join the pirate syndicate today. 
Unknown Speaker  31:48   That was fun.

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