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​Russ Johns
And guess what is the pirate broadcast? And I'm so excited today because well, it's because it's a good day to be excited. You know, it's Wednesday, like, let's make a random and if you've never been here, this is the pirate broadcast where we talk to interesting people about interesting things. And none other than Ira is in the house today and we're going to be talking to Ira about LinkedIn growth, you know, being productive printing, life, General, anything in between. So, Ira, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate the opportunity. And the fact that you got up early to talk to me today. So, hats off and applause, gratitude. And thank you so much for being here, man.

Ira Bowman
It's my pleasure and between the two of us we have more facial hair than we have hair on top of our heads. So that's awesome.

Russ Johns
Well, yeah, the thing is, like, no hair don't care. It's like, yeah, it's like, I'm good with it.

Ira Bowman
I told my wife last night. I mean, I'm ready for another haircut. I'm starting to feel like a hippie over here.

Russ Johns
Oh yeah, well, I liked I liked the feel of how it's, really tight. So Ira, we've been connected for a while now and I know you have, projects help you grow and if you extend banded your network considerably. And also, some of the stories that you're talking about with printing in and before we got on the call, you know, we were talking about printing and, and how you've been in the printing business for over 20 years and how it was kind of accidental, serendipitous, and how you arrived at this industry and you're very personable individual and people know you for your conversation, your connections and everything else. So walk us through the story and how you arrived at 120,000 plus connections on LinkedIn, because

Ira Bowman
I'm not quite 120 yet. I'm like, one of seven something but okay.

Russ Johns
All right.

Ira Bowman
Get there? You know, it's funny. In 2018, I had a conversation. I'm big on conversations, I like to talk to people. I like people. So I don't know that everybody understands like the heart of Ira but at the core of it all, is my desire to help people. It's always been that way, just the way that I I was kind of raised in molded. I had a very rough upbringing. And so you know, not wanting to see other people suffer is always been a part of my heart. So in 2018, I had this conversation with my friend Michael Connor. And Michael Connor runs this organization called SPN. Right. Back then it was really clear what SPN's mission was. And it was something I was all in for it was to help people. So he was raising funds for nonprofit organizations. And we had done a campaign to help save a life last year, actually through SPN. So anyways, a lot of good stuff happening on SPN, but he had challenged me He goes, Ira you've been on I got on LinkedIn in 2009.

Russ Johns
You've only been on Linkedin since 2009.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, so that's when I that's when I jumped on. So in 2009, I had about 400 or so connections in that first year. And then I pretty much was growing at about 100 hundred and 120 people per year. That was my average growth rate. Because I wasn't using it like I do now. Right. So it was just people that I met. Yeah, that I worked with that were clients, you know, someone like that I had actually talked to not, you know, just random people. And that's what LinkedIn is kind of turned into for me now is you will get to know him after you connect, and they follow Me. Right? But exactly, he challenged me. He goes, how come you only have 1500? I'll never forget the number because because it's ingrained in my brain at 1520 connections in 2018, it was May of 2018. We had this conversation. And he goes, how come and ago? I don't know what you're talking about. Because in my business, the print business 1500 connections, actually quite a bit. I was. I was three times the size of most print professionals on LinkedIn. In fact, I believe I have the number one print professional network in all of LinkedIn by quite a large majority. Right.

Russ Johns
So substantial numbers.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, there are people with millions of connections. I'm not Bill Gates, and You know any of these guys, of course, my Gary Vee or whatever. But in the print business, most people have less than a couple hundred. Right? So that's, you know, the world that I swim in. So I said, Mike, I don't understand why would I want to connect with people? I don't know, I'm never going to have an opportunity to work with because I was selling large format machines in the Bay Area, right? And so they're called plotters You and I were talking about that the beginning. They're called plotters, what, what why do I need to connect with somebody in Colorado or Florida, or heaven forbid, India or Australia or, you know, UK when I'm never going to interact with them in real life? Right? That was my mentality and that mentality of most people. So he said, Well, you know, you don't understand the way the second and third level connections work. And I said, Okay, well educate me, Three hours later. We were on the phone for three hours really was Mike and I now I consider Mike like one of my best friends. He's certainly my best LinkedIn friend. Without question right? My wife is my best Friend, but you know, other other than my wife, you know, I really consider him my best friend because he and I talked almost every single day. And sometimes we talked for hours at a time.

Russ Johns
Oh, that's awesome.

Ira Bowman
To the point where I have to say, dude, I gotta go get to work or he says it to me to be fair to

Russ Johns
Yeah, yeah. So I had those conversations with Mike too.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, you know, like Mike and I, we see a lot. I mean, it's funny because in a lot of ways we're cut from from different clothes. His personality, mine are different in a lot of ways, but we're similar in the way we attack problems and our work ethic and things like that. So anyways, he challenged me, he educated me and then from there, I just kind of ran with it. I'm like, Okay, I know I need to grow. Now, what do I do to grow? And that's actually a project "helpyougrow" started. So a lot of people know project helpyougrow. It's for helping people get jobs. It's for people who have jobs or recruiters to find people who need jobs. So it's just a free bridge. I don't make any money on it. In fact, I pay money to run it. Yeah. But it's free. It's a free service for everybody. That No ads, there's no commercials, there's no spam. There's no nothing great. Like, if you click on there's no pop ups, there's not even a place to put your credit card. Like, there's no, there's nothing with pay nothing. Yeah. So that's what it is now. But it actually started out as an experiment. And that's why I call it project helped you grow because it was just supposed to be like the short term project to help me and 100 volunteers all to grow by 100. Why 100? We'll go back to what I just said, My average growth rate was 100 per year. So I thought, well, maybe if I can accelerate that growth and get 100 and maybe a week or two, that would be really good. And I would, you know, increase my return on investment there. So that was the idea. Well, you know, it's funny, I was asking for the volunteers. I didn't even get to the project part. I put out a post that went viral. So 250,000 people viewed and there was like 3000 responses and we know it was just like the biggest thing I'd ever done a LinkedIn but what I asked was okay, I'm looking for 99 volunteers to make a group of 100. And we're each going to connect with the people in the group. That was it. I wasn't looking for people outside that hundred to join the commitment for you do it randomly, except the hundred people like that was the idea, right? Well, that first day, I grew by 400 people just me by myself. I didn't even have the list. And I was like, Okay, so this is something a little bit bigger. It's it's obviously an idea that people are responsive to. So then I created this group page in August of 2018, and created the project, help you grow group. And as people were joining by the thousands, what was happening was they were half of them. I don't know exactly the percentage, but it seemed like half. Were saying, I love the idea of helping me grow, but I need a job. Can you help me get a job? And I heard this over and over and over and over again. And I was like, I'm not in a position but let me because I like to help people. Sure. Awesome. You know, I think most most people are like, they want to be problem solvers. So it's like, Okay, let me see if I can figure this thing out. So I don't know if you've heard of FYI.to

Russ Johns
Rodrigo.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, Rodrigo. So I started using his smart lists. Yeah. Basically, I would take your LinkedIn profile if you said, Hey, can you help me find a job, I would take your LinkedIn profile, you know, make basically a player card out of it on his smart list. And I started doing this by the region. And then I would end the the lists out to recruiters and I'm connected to thousands of recruiters now, but back then, I was connected to about 130. And so I would send the list out and say, Okay, what are you looking for, you know, how can I help you find people and again, I wasn't looking for any referral fees or finder fees or any of that stuff. I was just trying to connect people.

Russ Johns
And it's interesting. It's interesting Ira, because, you know, I, my first connection with Mike SPN was we had a conversation, a long conversation with FYI.to Yeah, he was the first one introduced me to FYI to. And he was really into it in. I mean, we talked, I don't know, hours on that. And I got really involved in it and then connected with Rodrigo and same kind of thing. It's like all of these connections are, you know, it's the activity of the making the connections in introducing people and brokering those conversations that really help increase and improve the power of network,

Ira Bowman
as you know, and I had a long conversation with our ego which is hard because he's in the Philippines, right? Looks like

Russ Johns
he's a pirate. He's been on twice already.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna talk it was always midnight or one o'clock in the morning, my time you know, and he's like, bright eyed and bushy tailed. And I'm like, dude, I can barely keep my eyes open. But he got he got wind of what I was trying to do. I don't know if it was Mike or whatever. But he he got wind of what I was trying to do. So he reached out to me said hey, let's talk because I want to make you a I forget what he calls it. Premium Whatever. And basically what that meant was I could have unlimited pages, And so I've always tried to, like I have him listed as a partner on project helping you grow, it's been a lot of people assume those are paid spots, those aren't. Those are just, you know, people who have helped me out, or people that are doing good things, you know, website on there, but he got behind it. And he started like promoting me on the bottom string and, and so it was like, super cool. Now, another recruiter helped me take it to the next level, because they told me like, Look, if you want to make this really helpful for recruiters, they need to have dynamic search capabilities. And that is a limitation. On Rodrigo's site. You can do some simple searches. But when you're talking about dynamics, let me give you an example. Let's say you're looking for an IT. You did it right. So you got the guy. You want somebody who is got some developer experience maybe knows Java, you know, and maybe you want somebody who speaks French English and Spanish, and you want somebody who's available to work in Texas, right? So you need a way to be able to put in all that search criteria. So you're not searching through 7000 people on my website, okay? 7000 active right now. So you don't want to search through 7000 profiles, you just want to pull up to three that are actually eligible for that, right? So you'll be able to put in the Smart Filters and hit Search and then, you know, basically eliminate everybody's not eligible, so they don't waste their time. And I said, Okay, how do I do that? Well, then I met dealers link So again, it's just all these people like you just talked about, and that's what LinkedIn has become for me, right? It's, it's okay, when you start talking about this, I know somebody who does that, and you know, and I put people together all the time. And one thing that I've done and I don't know if everybody is doing this, I want I want to give you a tip, free tip for everybody. This is a great way to

Russ Johns
Free tip from Ira

Ira Bowman
Yeah, utilize LinkedIn this way and I promise you people will appreciate it and you're going to grow if you want to grow, this is a way that will help you. When someone says, Hey, do you know somebody who does whatever printing? And you say, Yeah, I know, Ira. Great, okay, now what I want you to do open a chat, start the chat with you, the person that was requesting and the person you're suggesting, and call it name it, the title, give it the title, whatever it is they're asking for, didn't just make the connection. And then as soon as they start talking, you just back out. And now it's just them. Because they're, they're probably not LinkedIn, so they can't connect via a message. But then they can ask questions without everybody in the world knowing it and without the person having to give their private email because some people aren't comfortable with that, or the phone number. You know, I mean, it gives them an opportunity to talk.

Russ Johns
it's not invasive, right?

Ira Bowman
That's like then anytime they can, then they can back away and delete the conversation and that person doesn't have access to them anymore. You know what I mean? So it's, it's a safe way to do it. It also gives that implied referral Like, hey, this is you know what I mean? So,

Russ Johns
yeah, totally, I totally get that, you know, and I don't know if you've seen what you've probably seen some of my videos, right? And so I'll do the same thing with dub in messenger. I'll just do a video message that hey, Ira I want to meet, I want you to introduce you to Mike. Mike is SPN Ira is doing some great things in and help project help you grow. And then I'll just let the conversation go. And, and then it's because I don't need to be there. You know, it's it's nice, but it's an inferred referral. Right?

Ira Bowman
Right. Right. Every day, every single day, I do that with people. You know, people go, Well, you can't possibly talk to 107,000 people. You're right. I can't. There's no way. But what I can do is I can give everybody who sends me a message attention. And everybody who talks to me in the comments. It's one thing most people don't know how I grew. You know, I talked about I focused on growth in 2018. And I didn't in 2019. And it's true. But why I continue to grow in 2019. In fact, I grew at a faster rate in 2019 than I did in 2018. Because I went from 25,000 people in 2019, or December of 2018 to 80,000 by December of 2019. So I added 6055 right, how did I do it? Well, how I done it, is by commenting, I respond to every single comment. If you comment on my post, I respond, I don't care who you are connected, connected, whatever, unless you're trolled and I typically would just delete you, but, but you know, if you leave a funny comment, if you say hello, if you ask me a question, if you make a statement, I'm going to respond and that so it's engagement.

Russ Johns
So your growth came from engagement?

Ira Bowman
Absolutely. And in organic engagement, not forced no spam. I just made a post yesterday about Anti spam

Russ Johns
I saw that post. brilliant post

Ira Bowman
find spam when it is and why you shouldn't do it. Like, I don't think people understand the importance of the personal brand. But also, like, you might notice I'm wearing my arc shirt. Yeah, I got dressed for work, and this is who I work for. But like, every time I post, I'm representing my company too. I think people forget that sometimes, like, they want to go off the edge and be a hothead or whatever. It's like, dude, you're, you're not only hurting yourself, you're hurting your company. So you gotta, you know, just be the real. You say kindness is cool all the time. And I love it. It's absolutely true.

Russ Johns
I got my pirate broadcast here.

Ira Bowman
Come on, brother. You know, free kind of cool. Don't be a dick. I mean, that's crazy

Russ Johns
exactly. It's like, there's no reason for it. You know, why? You have gratitude. You know, it's like, you wake up every day. I wake up every day and you know, I moved to Arizona, helped my parents, my dad's 91 he has dementia. You know, it's like He, yes, every day is a new day, right? My mom's 83 they don't drive, you know, we help the groceries and, you know, it's a labor of love some days and and the thing that we have to remember is that we're here doing some amazing thing when we when we started talking and you got into the print business 20 years ago, in 19, in the early 90s, I got into technology and started large formatting, printing, and the outdoor industry. And just this, you know, Radio TV, I've been in radio television advertising since then. And the fact that we can sit here and have a conversation and broadcast to however many people show up is, it's an amazing, it's an amazing thing to happen, right? So I just, I just want to I just want people to realize that we have a gift of the opportunity to broadcast You are the media, You are the product, you know you are the ability to, to share your message and your gifts. So let's make it a positive one. It doesn't have to be a negative one. So

Ira Bowman
yeah, and that's the thing

Russ Johns
like it's amazing to me how people forget that and we shouldn't forget that because it's worthwhile,

Ira Bowman
Yeah. If you go through my my comments, like the threads of my posts, you're going to see that over and over and over again, people telling me like, I can't believe how sincere you are. And you're authentic and you know, you're a real person. It's like, Yeah, because I'm just a print nerd. Like there's if you meet me in person, if you talk it doesn't matter. Wherever you see me I'm the same guy like the same guy. The same profile photo on every single platform not because I can't create pretty pictures trust me I use Photoshop I can I could do whatever I want. The fact is I am Ira everywhere. Yeah. And in a nice in I like I have a YouTube channel right? Ira Bowman channel on YouTube. You see, I've got over 150 videos on there. And I figured out last year what you're talking about, like, the ability to create videos and messages like I don't watch TV anymore.

Russ Johns
I don't watch. I haven't owned a TV since 95

Ira Bowman
you know, how do you get done all the things that get done, it's like, Well, look, there's, you know, I'm basically awake 18 to 20 hours a day. And, you know, I don't have to work, you know, eight to 10 of them. So, you know, it gives me 10 plus hours to do other things, right. So like to make images we just talked about Photoshop, I make images all the time. Fact I make more images than I do videos, but my I use Filmora nine is the volca I get asked that question all the time. What video, you know,

Russ Johns
I like Filmora

Ira Bowman
I liked it because it was just kind of a nice launching place to learn. Right now. Every I use Photoshop. I've been using Photoshop for over 10 years. So a lot of people just assume it would use the Adobe product and I did try it but it was a little bit too much for me as a beginner you know i mean like

Russ Johns
Yeah the learning curve in Premiere, I use the DaVinci Resolve

Ira Bowman
you have that I have that program too and I like it it just again for me starting it was a little bit too much

Russ Johns
yeah it's almost too much you know another program or your Mac guy or PC guy.

Ira Bowman
So it's funny I grew up Mac now modern me except for I have an iPhone. So I have actually I have an iPad two but my my work work is done on PC. All right. Let me I could HP guy so I use HP products.

Russ Johns
That's okay.

Ira Bowman
I'm sure the bank there's people at the bank who think I work for HP because I don't know if you guys know spiff checkers but like when you sell large format plotter. HP has these these special sales incentive checks that they'll send us and get quite a few of them. So like page wise and stuff, these are expensive machines, you know $20,000 $50,000 Yeah, machine says these texts are relatively large. But anyways, HP is ingrained in my brain, right? So like, I want to go to the store, it's not even on, like, I go on purpose, like I'm gonna buy an HP product on the shelf with all the other stuff, you know, like

Russ Johns
HP i got it

Ira Bowman
i use HP stuff.

Russ Johns
Yeah. Well, you know, because there's always there's some apps that work on Mac and there's some work that PC and I think the most important part though, is the fact that we're creating things. We're putting stuff out in the universe and we're at we're, the activity creates a bigger outcome than what we imagined.

Ira Bowman
There's no doubt I never thought that I would have 100,000 people. That's why people keep asking me like, you know, you're still focusing on growth and it's like, you know what, in 2020 actually said yes, I'm going to focus on growth again, because for the first time, like My pea brain and I'm not very smart people give me way too much credit for being smart. I call myself a Print nerd and people just assume I'm super intelligent. But anyways, I digress. For the first time, though, I was able to imagine a million, like my height, you know, and I'm like, What could I do with a million followers? And I do with the hundred thousand and there's actually some things I can I can see myself being able to do, and it's not for me, financially, like last year 2019 people go all the time they always ask this question, how do you monetize monetize it? How do you How does it you know, help you in your income. And I go well, first of all, I was able to start Bowman coaching and Bowman Coaching is not starting to make money. In fact, I get chewed out sometimes by people because they don't charge enough, right. But the whole point for me was never to to make it I like to replace my income. It was just a way to help people and you want to put a little bit of money cost on there, because you When people have skin in the game, then they take it more seriously.

Russ Johns
Absolutely.

Ira Bowman
I have limited time to do it. So that is also another thing. It's like okay, well, I can't I can't be here for 20 hours a day, right now to use LinkedIn. But so Bowman coaching helped me make a little bit of money. But the bigger the bigger thing, you know, my largest graphics, so I sell graphics, and I sell equipment. My largest customer for both categories last year came from people that I met and networked with on LinkedIn that I had not met in person. So it will, what does it do for you? Well, that's one of the things that helps me professionally. But there are some things for the project for project helped me grow for SPN for some of the the charities that I'm involved with, and some of these these extracurricular activities, I call them that having a larger audience would make a bigger impact. And so I'm going to push by the end of 2020 to be at 200,000. That's my goal. So 2018 was growth , heavy concentration for me. 19 was Not in 20 is going to be again

Russ Johns
So what do you think? How does video play into the equation?

Ira Bowman
Yeah, so that's where actually I was leading. Okay, so video plays a big part of it, because now I do LinkedIn live. And I know you do Linkedin live were on LinkedIn live right now. Right? So I do LinkedIn live. And I lose every single time I broadcast because of that silly notification that goes on to my network. I was live and they get sick of it, right. So people don't know how to turn that off. So they just delete me, I totally get it. But you know how the funny thing is, I have a hopper of people waiting thousands of people waiting to join, so just add a couple more. But the thing is, I'll lose so let's say five people. Sometimes it's three. Sometimes it's 10. Right, but a few people but I'll replace them with the backfill in the hopper, but I'll gain like 200 to 500 new followers. Because people don't want to read the attention span is is so short anymore. Yeah. And I do a show on printing it's called Beyond the page print Ed with Ira it's Tuesday mornings at 7am pacific time. So I do that show every Tuesday and people come and they learn in depth about the print industry. Now when I say I'm a print nerd actually mean I'm actual print nerd. I study the substrates. I study the vertical markets. We talked about, all kinds of stuff. So this past episode, I talked about car wraps Yeah, we're talking about substrates. I did a whole show on ink and substrates, right. Wait, what's the difference between solvent eco solvent diabase latex. I mean, I got into it, right. And then I talked about the difference between your screen and the paper. how, you know, with the with the screen, it's an additive and with paper, it's subtractive. And most people don't understand any of that. But it's a discipline

Russ Johns
Because I had to deal with all that at one point in my life. So yeah, it's I can relate to that. Yeah. Okay, I could totally relate to this. A wraps, wraps are a huge thing now. I mean, they're becoming bigger all the time and magnetic door carriers and things like that. And we were talking about aluminum, you know, printing on aluminum and everything like that. So that's a huge, that's a for me, Ira. This is this is where my head's going to. And this is one of the things that we have in alignment kind of is, is the, I want to create the pirate syndicate. So I can create shows for other people, and then help other people grow their shows. Right? Yeah. So it's almost like SPN with video. And the idea is that the more we actually create, and the more we put out there and the more that we have this opportunity, have a conversation. It just grows on itself.

Russ Johns
Well, you helped me and you don't even know it. Let me explain how you see the frame around the edges. It says Life is too short to be selfish. And that is my slogan. That's my personal mantra. Okay, because I used to be very selfish person, we could get into that if you want. But about 10 years ago, I had an epiphany to change to change my thoughts on being selfish to being a giver. But your frame is what we call it right? So you've got the piratebroadcast, so I didn't know that that was possible, until I started watching your show. And I was like, Ooh, that's cool. So I started to use that. So I do my shows now I'll have frames. Uh huh. You know what I mean? And that's why because branding, branding, hello, but it made it it makes it more visually interesting. Yes, it helps with the being informative. So anyways, that that I got that idea from you.

Russ Johns
Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. Hey, I want to give a shout out Ira to Some of the people that are in the room you know, it's always important to recognize people that are around and Jordan Gabriel. Always awesome to see uh, he's he's a newcomer actually coming in the video world and doing some great stuff. So Lori Knudson Good morning, Russ and Ira. Angie. Angie is a wonderful supporter. Love you Arcot. Gabriel. Sheri Lally is awesome. She's somebody that you need to connect with. Yeah. So Leslie Osborne Good morning. How are you? Great stuff. So Lori Cannons Good morning, Russ and Ira.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, I know. I know. A lot of these people gave real good morning, Arcot Good Morning The first level connection of mine it's hard to have first level connections when you have 100,007. So, you know, tell me all the time like you know, well if I'm not direct connected can we still communicate? I'm like, yeah, just find me in the comments, man.

Russ Johns
make a comment we'll have a conversation.

Ira Bowman
That's it.

Russ Johns
I not maxed out yet so you can still connect with me. So yeah, Ira connect with me and then I will connect you with Ira.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, I tell people to look if you find my first level connections like Russ here. Just ask him to send me a message and then add add you to the conversation. Yeah, people. So it,

Russ Johns
I will I'm more than happy if I if I'm having a connection. I'll be more than happy to help make the make connect the dots. Right. Maureen Watson. Thank you so much. This is Elizabeth, Carol. Windy. Good morning Kenyatta. Awesome, thank you so much. Teresa, Justin. So I want to wrap it up because I know you got a busy day. Ira and this has been, you know, we've been back and forth in this Arizona time kills me sometimes and it's like, okay, they don't have a daylight savings time. So another week, you know, you could have had another hour sleeps, like but I know you have a family and you have lots going on so you don't sleep a lot anyway.

Ira Bowman
So I sleep about four hours a day people ask me that all the time. You know, I'm having trouble sleeping it's 2 if I'm getting good sleep it's five but you know average?

Russ Johns
Well, I I used to run that schedule a lot when I when kids were younger and in that life was busier. So I've learned to slow down a little bit but I just I just want to thank you so much for being here. Ira. I know that we could go on from hours because I think we're both the kind of individuals that have, you know, things and experiences that we could share and we love sharing. We love helping others. And so anyone that's not connected, you know, I know Iris probably maxed out on connection. So like he said, you know, if you have the opportunity to get in a conversation, here is a great place to do it. LinkedIn is powerful community. I love the video fact. So you have some other shows on video as well.

Ira Bowman
Yes, yeah, I do two shows consistently right now, every week so Friday, okay, so it's not always Friday. I have a thing it's a hashtag Follow me. And, and it's following me Fridays the idea. So project helped me grow still has the there's five tenants basically and two of them are based on jobs with the rest, you know, to help people grow their social media network, not just LinkedIn to help, how to get engagement to help them was one on one peer coaching, free coaching, you know so so like a peer mentor, mentor, and then of course to help people find jobs. That's that's all the tenants of project help ago. So first of all, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I will follow you back, I follow over 100,000 people.

Russ Johns
Wow.

Ira Bowman
So every single person who follows me as long as they will open up their settings to allow followers because now sometimes people don't and they can't follow. So if you set if you set your your security settings to allow people to follow you and I will follow you back. The other thing is, I'm on all the social media platforms so Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, if you will come to those in connect with me. You can connect with me there. and also You can message me there. So there's another tip for you. If you're wanting to connect with somebody who's next on LinkedIn, they're likely not maxed out everywhere else. Yeah. Their platforms, search them out, connect with them. And then you can message with them there. Look, I've made friends on other platforms that we became good friends. And I made a spot for them on LinkedIn, because we became good friends on, you know what I mean? So there's strategies there that hopefully you guys are listening to that you can apply, you know. And the other thing is like, I'm in sales, this is one thing I like to share with everybody. Like everybody says, Okay, my favorite social media platform is whatever mines Lincoln and, and so I'm going to stay there. And I'm going to, I'm going to hang out there. Well, for me, I'm going to print business. I'm trying to sell services for printing,

Russ Johns
you don't know where your clients are going to be hanging out.

Ira Bowman
That's what I'm about to say the preference of the client is more important than your personal preference, because you're the producer, not the consumer. If you're here to consume and consume by all means, wherever you feel comfortable, but if you're a producer like I am, you need all you need to find them where they are. So don't spend all your time on one platform if you're in sales marketing right now. You need to mix that up. You need to do some research, ask your clients, do you even have a LinkedIn account? You would be amazed many of mine don't. Right? I walk into a room. They have no idea who Ira Bowman is they don't know LinkedIn, they don't care. But a lot of them have Facebook, a lot of them are using Instagram. So you know, I started to work on building those platforms over the years because it's important.

Russ Johns
So are you doing your shows, you're streaming your shows out to those platforms as well.

Ira Bowman
I shared shows on I have FYI channel for the print show. So I've made five shows are on my FYI list. I shared that list then on Facebook and some of the other platforms. I tweet a lot a tweet every day and Instagram post every day. Sometimes they're the videos sometimes they're just pictures of me, you know, like doing show prep or you know doing cold calls. Still people are fascinated by that. But I still walk in doors that I've never heard of They've never heard of me. So it's kind of fun. But I get this way. So I do it. And then. So the two videos I do the show on Tuesday and the show on Thursday, or Thursday or Friday, globally, a lot of the world is ahead of us, right. So Friday in India is still Thursday in the United States. So I sometimes will start the show Thursday night, sometimes I'll do it Friday morning. I usually will do the show before Friday lunch in California. And then I do YouTube videos. Like if I'm doing a print show, or if I'm doing you know, something cool. I will put that on YouTube. And so it will it won't necessarily be a LinkedIn live but it'll be you know, just a video on YouTube and and I'll share that on all my social media platforms. So I love video. I think if you haven't started creating video, you should dabble in it because that's where things are going,

Russ Johns
especially for business owners that need a little bit more authority visibility, you know, traction and don't worry about This show gear the show here we're streaming to Facebook two channels and facebook youtube and Periscope so it shows up on the notification shows up on Twitter so you can you can catch it anywhere

Ira Bowman
well and the thing is I would tell people like I was nervous to make my first video I shot 35 takes it took an hour and a half to make the video and it still was junk but the thing is like you just gotta jump in and jump in yeah jump in and do it after after a couple videos I started to get the hang of stuff and now I'm getting people like asked me like how do you do that the the music and how do you do the framing and how do you bring in the banners and all that stuff? I'm like well, streamyard or it actually makes it really easy.

Russ Johns
Ben Gage areawesome so yeah. What are you gonna come on the show? All right, yeah, Ben Gage you guys know? Right

Ira Bowman
on the show and you know, Filmora nine again, super easy now. expensive, I think it was like $60 for a lifetime membership. So, you know, I mean, there's, there's things out there you can use that are free or, or, or close to free, you know, they're

Russ Johns
well, and in the fact that we have so much access, I mean Canva you can create amazing graphics with simple graphics, we can but you know it, you don't have to, you know, necessarily be a master at Photoshop, like yourself. You know, there's a lot of things that are out there that are

Ira Bowman
But to your point, absolutely, you can do a lot of stuff in Canada. In fact, I have clients who pay me to create their cover art or their profile photo, and it's like, Okay, well if you if you want to spend to $75 into charge, I certainly you know will do that for you. But you can go to canva, do it for free. And I'll give you tips on how to do it right. Like if you go to my LinkedIn profile, go to Ira Bowman on LinkedIn. Look at what I've done on the right. I've put four words to tell you very succinctly what I do. So anybody who comes to my profile doesn't have to guess what is an IRA doing for a living. I'm a graphic sales professional. That's what I do. So just say a bold say clear, you know, keepit in canva, you could keep it really simple. And those simple clean graphics communicate. So well

Russ Johns
It was so funny new connections I used to send out with a link to a tutorial I did on how to how to update your header, your LinkedIn header, in using Canva. And it was a simple thing. And I got a couple of people coming back saying what's wrong with my header? Like, nothing wrong with your header, just like, I just, it's just something that I'm just offering for free.

Ira Bowman
sometimes people get defensive, and it's like, Man, you come on.

Russ Johns
unwind a little bit.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're really proud of it, that's fine. I get people whose Dell send me the resume they go, what do you think this resume is? Where's the job description? Like, what do you mean? Like, we don't do shotgun resumes anymore, man. Yeah, figure this out, things changed paradigms change. You know, I wrote a post the other day about making adjustments, small adjustments can make a big impact. You know, one of the things that that we were talking about in the comments was, well, you know, like the targets move, there's moving targets now. So yeah, you want to be you know, an engineer, you want to be a print professional, whatever you want to be, like, you start out in college or wherever you start out, you know, the beginning of your journey. By the time you get four or five years in, you need to make sure that the things haven't changed, so that you're still heading in the right direction, because maybe as things move, like for us, there's a lot of augmented reality and virtual reality, and 3d printing and things that have changed. You know, if you're printing less, in some respects, and printing more and others, but you know what I mean? So, if you're doing things the way you were doing it five years ago, you're likely not on the right Course anymore.

Russ Johns
the ability to adapt in your environment, regardless of that environment is going to be the most successful maneuver you can do. So, that's the way it goes. Hey, Ira, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you and the work that you're doing And, and for those of, you know, track Ira down on some other platforms, go follow him on on, you know, follow both of us on YouTube, subscribe to our channels. You know, we're small on YouTube. I'm small on YouTube. I don't know Ira. You probably have a few followers over there. And just connect with the people that you care about and people that you haven't met yet, and find out how you can care about them.

Ira Bowman
Yeah, person if you want to connect with me and truly you want to, you know, build human. Just be a real real person right? But don't be phony because I thought it a mile away Don't send me your spam. I'm not interested but you know, conversation talk about we're talking about in, you know, even if it's just I'll tell you another tip before we get out of here. One more tip, any platform, you can always compliment the person who wrote it. If you can't think of something, you know, brilliant or funny or whatever to say just you know, say like, Hello, good morning. I really liked your post or whatever, you know. That's genuine and people will appreciate that more than you trying to be precocious, right?

Russ Johns
Yeah. You don't need to be a smarty pants every day.

Ira Bowman
And humour is part of my personality

Russ Johns
I, you know, it's like okay, we're gonna have a side of sarcasm to as well.

Ira Bowman
that's why Michael Connor and I get along so well. God, no kidding. No kidding.

Russ Johns
Well, I hope Michael has an opportunity to catch this and share with the community as well. And if you don't know Michael go follow Michael and SPN. And there's a lot of people that I'm connected with that are in SPN. I'm an SPN as well. So I just love these connections. I love the opportunity, Rodrigo, FYI.to is another platform, Ruben over a dub. I'm one of my favorite platforms for connecting and building relationships and connecting over there as well. So I love the fact that we're here. I look forward to doing this again, in the future. And I love the conversations of you know, developing these and helping other people along their journey as well. So

Ira Bowman
I understand you're having dinner Friday night with one of my good buddies, Nick Dorsey.

Russ Johns
Oh, yeah. Nick, you had you had you shared a you broke bread with Nick earlier, didn't you?

Ira Bowman
I'm actually doing it tomorrow. So now tonight, so he's leaving Washington right now. Yeah, print is Moving beyond right now. He said, He's gonna he's gonna stay in my area so we can have breakfast together. I've never actually met him in person. That's another guy. I met him in September on LinkedIn. You know, he had basically no connections now guys got 10,000 because I'm doing what I've taught them how to do. And, you know, just being a real person. This is a guy that posts like every four or five days he doesn't post very much at all. Yeah, super cool guy. He's moving to Arizona. I know. Yeah.

Russ Johns
Good. Got dinner on Friday.

Russ Johns
We do we could talk forever. I'm telling you

Russ Johns
We will have to pick up the phone and carry it on.

Ira Bowman
So yeah, well, anytime you want me back on. I'm down so awesome.

Russ Johns
Well, we'll catch you in the same time zone because after the eighth Arizona goes back to pacific time zone so it's like will catch you then

Ira Bowman
Yeah you are awesome half the year and the other half. I don't know.

Russ Johns
All right. Hey, you know kindness is cool. smiles are free, and You enjoy the day.

Ira Bowman
And now I'm officially a pirate.

Russ Johns
You are officially a pirate

Ira Bowman
Do you see the Darth Vader behind me?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai