Why Staying Visible Matters: Wisdom from Karen Gunther | RR292

Janice Porter: 00:00:00

Karen, welcome to this week's episode of

Janice Porter: 00:00:05

relationships rule. Today I'm excited to welcome Karen Gunther

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to the show. Karen has over 25 years of experience as a

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professional business development manager, and is the

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founder of stay visible marketing with a strong

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background in sales, Karen specializes in helping B to B

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business businesses connect with prospects and clients through

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email marketing LinkedIn and enhancing their overall digital

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presence. She's passionate about networking and relationship

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building, offering expertise in crm management to support

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consistent and meaningful connections throughout the sales

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process. Karen is here to share her insights on creating

Janice Porter: 00:00:44

authentic business relationships that drive success. Welcome.

Janice Porter: 00:00:48

Welcome to the show. Karen, super excited to be here.

Janice Porter: 00:00:50

Janice, thank you. You're my pleasure. We've been talking

Janice Porter: 00:00:53

about this for a while and and I guess I want to start by saying

Janice Porter: 00:00:57

I love that you you see the power and value of LinkedIn to

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help people with their businesses, because you know

Janice Porter: 00:01:05

that that's where I live and and yet, a lot of people who who use

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LinkedIn don't see the relationship side of it. They

Janice Porter: 00:01:15

see content, content, content, and that's about it. So can we

Janice Porter: 00:01:19

start there? Can we just, can you give me your take on how you

Janice Porter: 00:01:23

use it with your clients, or what you you know, what you

Janice Porter: 00:01:27

teach or what you share with people? Yeah, my,

Karen Gunther: 00:01:35

my company's name is stay visible marketing, and

Karen Gunther: 00:01:38

there's a reason for that, because I believe it's about

Karen Gunther: 00:01:41

visibility. And whether you're at a networking event, in

Karen Gunther: 00:01:45

person, virtually on LinkedIn, your website, how often you're

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reaching out to people with email marketing or general

Karen Gunther: 00:01:52

emails, it's all about visibility. And with so much

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noise in the marketplace, it is so important to have that

Karen Gunther: 00:02:04

ability to reach through that noise, is the way I look at it.

Karen Gunther: 00:02:08

So when it comes to LinkedIn, specifically, as a rule, it's

Karen Gunther: 00:02:14

important to understand the algorithm. Now, I don't know

Karen Gunther: 00:02:17

what the algorithm is, only LinkedIn knows what the

Janice Porter: 00:02:20

outcome changes all the time, right, right? And

Janice Porter: 00:02:22

it's being

Karen Gunther: 00:02:23

changed all the time. In fact, I learned

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something today that changed since I last looked at it to

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this specific action two weeks ago, which is really

Karen Gunther: 00:02:30

interesting. So it seems like once a month there's something

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else that's changing when you go to look for a people within a

Karen Gunther: 00:02:37

company specifically. And this is being broadcast in November

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of 24 so we have this timestamp for it. When you go look for a

Karen Gunther: 00:02:45

company and you go look for the people in the company, you used

Karen Gunther: 00:02:47

to be able to do multiple search terms to narrow down the person

Karen Gunther: 00:02:51

you were looking for. Now they only give you one in the keyword

Karen Gunther: 00:02:56

part, yes, yes. Just learned that this morning when I was

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working with somebody. So it's just they're constantly changing

Karen Gunther: 00:03:03

things. So when it comes to the algorithm, and I was training a

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person this morning about this saying, LinkedIn was purchased

Karen Gunther: 00:03:11

by Microsoft in 2016 and they have done a phenomenal job of

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monetizing it. So the important thing is, is that, how can you

Karen Gunther: 00:03:19

use the the algorithm that LinkedIn uses for monetization

Karen Gunther: 00:03:27

for their own business, to help you with your business. That's

Karen Gunther: 00:03:30

how I look at it. So it comes down to visibility. So how do

Karen Gunther: 00:03:34

you use that visibility? Well, they look at interactions. So

Karen Gunther: 00:03:38

when you are posting, you want to make sure that there's a hook

Karen Gunther: 00:03:42

in there so that people will respond, and then that creates

Karen Gunther: 00:03:44

an opportunity for you to talk to people. If you're going to

Karen Gunther: 00:03:48

like something, you not don't want to just like it. You want

Karen Gunther: 00:03:51

to also comment on it, because if you comment on it, that has

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more credibility when it comes to the more hooks for the

Karen Gunther: 00:03:57

algorithm. If you're going to repost something, repost

Karen Gunther: 00:04:00

something with a comment, because that helps you and the

Karen Gunther: 00:04:04

person that posted the original post. And when they go to their

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notifications, they will see that you did that. So the more

Karen Gunther: 00:04:10

often you're popping up, the more visible you are, the more

Karen Gunther: 00:04:14

opportunity they have to be reminded that you exist. There

Karen Gunther: 00:04:17

are so many ways to connect with people. There are so many

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connections that we've all made over our careers, it's almost

Karen Gunther: 00:04:25

overwhelming. You don't remember you know somebody. So to be able

Karen Gunther: 00:04:30

to make sure that when you are, you know, calling on a

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particular prospect or trying to get deeper into particular

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client, you want to make sure that wherever they are that

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you're popping up and that visibility can be done through

Karen Gunther: 00:04:44

LinkedIn if you do it carefully and you do it authentically.

Karen Gunther: 00:04:49

That's

Janice Porter: 00:04:50

so true. I know that's a big piece of teaching

Janice Porter: 00:04:54

people how to use LinkedIn effectively in the work that I

Janice Porter: 00:04:57

do, too. So I. You give me an example of a company that you

Janice Porter: 00:05:05

might be working with. Did you work with sales teams in or do

Janice Porter: 00:05:08

you work with you? I know that you do work with different

Janice Porter: 00:05:11

kinds, different kinds of clients. You have a heart, and

Janice Porter: 00:05:15

so you help people at university and you you do some work with

Janice Porter: 00:05:20

students or grad students and things like that. But you also

Janice Porter: 00:05:23

work with individual, small business owners and bigger

Janice Porter: 00:05:26

teams. Is that correct?

Karen Gunther: 00:05:28

All of the above? Okay, absolutely. I work with

Karen Gunther: 00:05:30

companies that are, you know, up to 100 million, down to, you

Karen Gunther: 00:05:34

know, nonprofits. So I literally just brought on a new client in

Karen Gunther: 00:05:39

the last 24 hours. That's a nonprofit that needs help with

Karen Gunther: 00:05:42

getting certain marketing out and helping help with their

Karen Gunther: 00:05:45

website to get it updated, little things like that. I work

Karen Gunther: 00:05:49

with primarily business to business companies, because I

Karen Gunther: 00:05:53

find that the logic associated with business works a little

Karen Gunther: 00:05:57

easier for me. I can understand that more than going business to

Karen Gunther: 00:06:00

consumer. Consumers have a lot more variability, so I prefer

Karen Gunther: 00:06:05

the business to business landscape. But more importantly,

Karen Gunther: 00:06:08

I work individually with the sales people, as well as with

Karen Gunther: 00:06:13

the sales team. I recently served with a new client where

Karen Gunther: 00:06:17

they want me to help them review their website and making sure

Karen Gunther: 00:06:21

their branding and their their messaging is correct with what

Karen Gunther: 00:06:25

they're saying the workplace right now. They also want me to

Karen Gunther: 00:06:29

work with their individual sales reps, because we were going to

Karen Gunther: 00:06:34

be starting a LinkedIn posting, you know, campaigns for them.

Karen Gunther: 00:06:39

And I want to train their sales reps, not only to have a good

Karen Gunther: 00:06:42

LinkedIn, strong LinkedIn profile, so that when they're

Karen Gunther: 00:06:45

going after their prospects and clients, they look very

Karen Gunther: 00:06:47

professional, but also to train them how to use technology,

Karen Gunther: 00:06:51

tools, chat, GPT, the scheduling task, the scheduling piece on

Karen Gunther: 00:06:57

LinkedIn and others, to amplify the company's message. So when

Karen Gunther: 00:07:02

we do the posting for the company, the sales reps are

Karen Gunther: 00:07:05

authentically posting and reposting and amplifying that

Karen Gunther: 00:07:09

message. And so I'm literally working with a brand new sales

Karen Gunther: 00:07:12

rep tomorrow that's as an on an individual basis, teaching them

Karen Gunther: 00:07:16

technology tools to make them more savvy and better and to up

Karen Gunther: 00:07:20

level their their their own personal profile and their brand

Karen Gunther: 00:07:25

in the marketplace, but by doing that, rising up the brand of the

Karen Gunther: 00:07:29

company as well. So it's an organic search. It's an organic

Karen Gunther: 00:07:33

lift all the way around. I also started with helping them with

Karen Gunther: 00:07:37

their sales force, and I will probably be putting together

Karen Gunther: 00:07:40

more email templates for them to use in their Salesforce, so that

Karen Gunther: 00:07:43

it makes it easier to use technology for their sales reps

Karen Gunther: 00:07:46

to reach out to their prospects and clients with a message that

Karen Gunther: 00:07:49

makes sense. It

Janice Porter: 00:07:51

does and it doesn't okay in the sense that

Janice Porter: 00:07:54

you're such a tech guru that that, in a way, that's your

Janice Porter: 00:07:58

secret sauce, or your your zone of genius is making it easier

Janice Porter: 00:08:03

for people, or seeing where you can help them make it easier by

Janice Porter: 00:08:06

using some tools, technical tools in in the process those

Janice Porter: 00:08:11

things, like we were talking offline about about a new app

Janice Porter: 00:08:17

that was being shown to us, or something I see, I just glazed

Janice Porter: 00:08:20

over When it happened on a call that we were both on, and you

Janice Porter: 00:08:24

understood it way more than I did, because I'm just the people

Janice Porter: 00:08:26

person. I'm not I'm not the tech person, I'm the people person.

Janice Porter: 00:08:30

And I don't say just, I shouldn't say that, I just mean

Janice Porter: 00:08:33

that that's my my zone of genius is building relationships with

Janice Porter: 00:08:37

people, and that's what I like to teach people to do as well.

Janice Porter: 00:08:41

In the process that you go through with, say, these new

Janice Porter: 00:08:45

sales people that you work with, I'm just curious. I remember

Janice Porter: 00:08:51

back, I'll give you a little back story. And back in the day

Janice Porter: 00:08:54

when I was doing corporate training, and I would be the

Janice Porter: 00:08:58

trainers, were always the last people to go out to the customer

Janice Porter: 00:09:01

site. They put in, I worked for the telephone company, or I

Janice Porter: 00:09:04

contracted to them, and somebody would sell them, the sale the

Janice Porter: 00:09:08

phone system, somebody else would design it and implement it

Janice Porter: 00:09:12

so that, you know, it rang three times here before it went to

Janice Porter: 00:09:15

this person and all of the different things around it. And

Janice Porter: 00:09:17

then the installer would go in and install it. And then we came

Janice Porter: 00:09:20

in and we trained on how to use the system, from the

Janice Porter: 00:09:23

receptionist to the CEO to the IT people all different versions

Janice Porter: 00:09:28

of what they had to do. But inevitably, we'd get there and

Janice Porter: 00:09:32

we'd see how it was set up, where we had the book that

Janice Porter: 00:09:35

showed and we go, like, why did they do it this way? Right?

Janice Porter: 00:09:38

Because nobody asked a trainer or asked the right people to get

Janice Porter: 00:09:41

those answers. So when you get these new sales people, do you

Janice Porter: 00:09:45

ever wonder what this guy's doing selling, or what that

Janice Porter: 00:09:49

woman's doing in that kind of industry? Does it ever not mesh

Janice Porter: 00:09:54

for you when you're dealing with them? Because you have to deal

Janice Porter: 00:09:56

with what you have but I. Does that ever happen?

Karen Gunther: 00:10:03

Yeah, it actually does. Wonder what the heck's

Karen Gunther: 00:10:06

going on here. Why did I hire this person? Yeah, I need to do.

Karen Gunther: 00:10:09

How do we salvage this situation? Yes, on a different

Karen Gunther: 00:10:14

tact, I do absolutely agree with that, and I will, I will respond

Karen Gunther: 00:10:20

back to the management, yeah, and provide my concerns. Yeah.

Karen Gunther: 00:10:23

Okay, good, absolutely. 100% and that's part of the I do

Karen Gunther: 00:10:27

individualized sales training. I can do, like group sales

Karen Gunther: 00:10:30

training, webinars, seminars, things of that nature. I have no

Karen Gunther: 00:10:32

problem doing that in person or, you know, virtually. It doesn't

Karen Gunther: 00:10:35

matter. I'm happy to do that. But I find that the greatest

Karen Gunther: 00:10:40

shift can happen when I work one on one with a person, regardless

Karen Gunther: 00:10:44

of who they are in the organization. If I can work with

Karen Gunther: 00:10:46

them one on one, we figure out where their speed bumps are with

Karen Gunther: 00:10:50

the technology, and then we move them past that so that their

Karen Gunther: 00:10:53

lives are easier on a day to day basis. And like I worked with

Karen Gunther: 00:10:57

somebody this morning who had their outlook set up, but they

Karen Gunther: 00:11:01

didn't have it set up so that the images downloaded. So every

Karen Gunther: 00:11:04

time they went into an email, if they wanted to see the images,

Karen Gunther: 00:11:07

they had to click the button to download the images. Is a very

Karen Gunther: 00:11:09

common thing, right? Well, what happens is the as I went

Karen Gunther: 00:11:15

through, I said, Do this, and I walk them through the process

Karen Gunther: 00:11:17

for the settings, and I had him go through and shift that so

Karen Gunther: 00:11:21

that it downloads it completely right? Every single time. He's

Karen Gunther: 00:11:25

like, Oh my gosh, that's going to save me so much time every

Karen Gunther: 00:11:27

day. And it's just little things like that that just make our day

Karen Gunther: 00:11:31

so much better, you know. But I sit there and I wonder, why

Karen Gunther: 00:11:35

isn't somebody going through and helping these people, you know,

Karen Gunther: 00:11:39

work through this process, you know?

Janice Porter: 00:11:41

Oh, I know, I totally can identify with that.

Janice Porter: 00:11:44

Because some things I think, Gosh, I gotta call, I'm an apple

Janice Porter: 00:11:47

girl. Gotta call apple and just ask them about this. And then I

Janice Porter: 00:11:50

never get around to it. So I'm still doing the same things the

Janice Porter: 00:11:54

wrong way, or whatever. So I get that, um, so, uh, questions. Um,

Janice Porter: 00:12:04

you do email marketing with some of your clients, yes, and um,

Janice Porter: 00:12:08

email marketing, it's become more challenging, I think, and

Janice Porter: 00:12:13

more complex. So how do you ensure that your clients emails

Janice Porter: 00:12:18

land in the inbox and resonate with their audience, because

Janice Porter: 00:12:21

it's hard these days to even get people to open those emails.

Karen Gunther: 00:12:26

Yes, that's two different tasks. One is to get

Karen Gunther: 00:12:28

at landing in the email box, landing in the inbox. That's an

Karen Gunther: 00:12:31

entirely different task that has to do with the person's domain

Karen Gunther: 00:12:34

and their DNS text records. Huh, exactly about six years ago.

Karen Gunther: 00:12:41

About five years ago, the that shift happened where outlook

Karen Gunther: 00:12:46

decided to no longer accept third party email platforms. And

Karen Gunther: 00:12:51

so you're saying that email focus

Janice Porter: 00:12:53

on you focus on Outlook. Only, no, oh no. I'm

Karen Gunther: 00:12:59

just using that as an example, okay, okay?

Karen Gunther: 00:13:01

Because when you're in a Gmail inbox, you'll see that it has

Karen Gunther: 00:13:05

your main email and it has a social and it has promotional

Karen Gunther: 00:13:09

okay tabs. That's just what most people see. Yeah, Outlook

Karen Gunther: 00:13:13

decided to go to something simpler, similar to that, made

Karen Gunther: 00:13:16

it different, and as a result of that, I had to have a crash

Karen Gunther: 00:13:19

course in it and how the handshakes work between servers

Karen Gunther: 00:13:25

to get emails delivered. And I didn't know anything about that,

Karen Gunther: 00:13:29

but now it's just second nature for me to whenever I set up a

Karen Gunther: 00:13:32

new client, to go in and to manage this process to make sure

Karen Gunther: 00:13:35

their stuff gets delivered. So there's that one piece of it

Karen Gunther: 00:13:38

right there is getting it into the inboxes. For those of you

Karen Gunther: 00:13:42

who are listening to this podcast, it's called the DNS

Karen Gunther: 00:13:44

text record, feel free to contact me. My information will

Karen Gunther: 00:13:48

be in the show notes, and I'll be happy to walk you through

Karen Gunther: 00:13:50

that so you can understand that for yourself. For that, it's too

Karen Gunther: 00:13:53

long to explain for this process, talking about here's

Karen Gunther: 00:13:56

way too techie. It's not even worth it to take the time to

Karen Gunther: 00:13:59

talk about that. Now the second thing is, is that, how do you

Karen Gunther: 00:14:03

get the person to open it? Well, there are times and days that

Karen Gunther: 00:14:08

are better to send so that emails will be seen as part of

Karen Gunther: 00:14:11

the normal business day. Somebody think about how you

Karen Gunther: 00:14:16

yourself approach your email in the morning. So in the morning

Karen Gunther: 00:14:19

you get you either looking at your phone having your cup of

Karen Gunther: 00:14:22

coffee, or you're at your computer and your finger is

Karen Gunther: 00:14:25

hovered over the delete button, or you're swiping delete one of

Karen Gunther: 00:14:29

the two. And so that means everything that comes in in the

Karen Gunther: 00:14:33

morning prior to the normal business day starting is now

Karen Gunther: 00:14:35

subject to being easily deleted. So you want to make sure to send

Karen Gunther: 00:14:40

your emails during the normal business day, so not before

Karen Gunther: 00:14:45

people start their business day, and not right, and not during

Karen Gunther: 00:14:48

lunch, because that's another time where people spend time

Karen Gunther: 00:14:50

deleting. So it's just there's a time frame that you send it now.

Karen Gunther: 00:14:54

So the time that you send the email indicates whether somebody

Karen Gunther: 00:14:57

will actually open it or not. The only other thing. Thing that

Karen Gunther: 00:15:00

is contingent on whether somebody will open the email or

Karen Gunther: 00:15:03

not, is the subject line, Oh, there's one other thing and that

Karen Gunther: 00:15:06

they actually know you. So if you receive an email from

Karen Gunther: 00:15:10

somebody you don't know, then you look at the subject, subject

Karen Gunther: 00:15:13

line to see, gosh, do I Is there something beneficial for me in

Karen Gunther: 00:15:16

this email? That's That's it, that that's all there is. So you

Karen Gunther: 00:15:21

always want to make sure it comes from a person's name or a

Karen Gunther: 00:15:24

well known company, you know, if it's a well known brand. So if

Karen Gunther: 00:15:28

you're a smaller company, you want to make sure it comes from

Karen Gunther: 00:15:30

your name as the business owner or the salesperson. And then you

Karen Gunther: 00:15:34

want to make sure that this the subject line. So that's just

Karen Gunther: 00:15:37

for, like, third party emails, even for sending emails during

Karen Gunther: 00:15:40

the day, just as a normal course of business, to reach out to

Karen Gunther: 00:15:43

people, to prospect, you want to make sure that your subject line

Karen Gunther: 00:15:46

is not very long, and that it has you know, relevant

Karen Gunther: 00:15:50

information, so that somebody will open it, and then once

Karen Gunther: 00:15:54

people open it, that's where we get to the does this resonate?

Karen Gunther: 00:15:58

Right? What I really love, and I'll give you these kudos.

Karen Gunther: 00:16:01

Janice, what I really love about your newsletters that you send

Karen Gunther: 00:16:04

out is you do have an engaging subject line. Number one, they

Karen Gunther: 00:16:07

are sent at a time that makes sense for people to open it, at

Karen Gunther: 00:16:10

least for me. And the third thing is, is that I know that

Karen Gunther: 00:16:14

when I receive those newsletters from you, that there's going to

Karen Gunther: 00:16:17

be something in there that will touch me and make me think about

Karen Gunther: 00:16:21

something differently, because that's what I've because I've

Karen Gunther: 00:16:25

spent time looking at your newsletters. At first it was

Karen Gunther: 00:16:28

like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, right. It's just

Karen Gunther: 00:16:29

another newsletter. But when I stopped to actually take the

Karen Gunther: 00:16:32

time to look at the newsletter and read it, I'm like, oh,

Karen Gunther: 00:16:34

there's going to be something interesting in here. I'm going

Karen Gunther: 00:16:37

to want to read this. And so I will set it aside so that I have

Karen Gunther: 00:16:41

time and I'll flag it so I can go back and look at it, so that

Karen Gunther: 00:16:44

I can say, Okay, I went through and I read it, and I picked up

Karen Gunther: 00:16:47

the one really cool tip. And it may not even be the thing that

Karen Gunther: 00:16:49

you were intending for people to pick up Janice, because that's

Karen Gunther: 00:16:52

the interesting thing. But I do know that when it comes to

Karen Gunther: 00:16:55

certain people, when they send me emails, that there's going to

Karen Gunther: 00:16:57

be something, you know, in that there for me. So let's get let's

Karen Gunther: 00:17:01

go to the next point. You're sending out marketing emails to

Karen Gunther: 00:17:04

people you don't know and who don't know you. How do you make

Karen Gunther: 00:17:06

sure it resonates? Well, you need to understand their

Karen Gunther: 00:17:08

industry. You need to understand their challenges. You need to

Karen Gunther: 00:17:11

understand what keeps them up at night. You need to understand

Karen Gunther: 00:17:14

what they might be interested in learning more about. And you

Karen Gunther: 00:17:17

need to provide education. If I'm just trying to hawk

Karen Gunther: 00:17:20

something and sell it. It's not going to go through, but if I

Karen Gunther: 00:17:22

offer education as part of the content, then it becomes more

Karen Gunther: 00:17:27

valuable. It's

Janice Porter: 00:17:28

interesting, because that's the part I like

Janice Porter: 00:17:29

the best. I want to make sure that I can teach them something.

Janice Porter: 00:17:32

And what I've started to learn, though, is that it's okay to

Janice Porter: 00:17:36

repeat yourself, because not everybody reads it every time,

Janice Porter: 00:17:40

and so on and and it's different way of saying the same thing. It

Janice Porter: 00:17:43

might start to connect with, actually, what something you

Janice Porter: 00:17:46

just said, which is that you know the flavor of my of my

Janice Porter: 00:17:52

newsletter, well, that's what you get over time, right? But

Janice Porter: 00:17:55

that that the message is clear, right? It's either about, well,

Janice Porter: 00:18:01

there's different parts to it, but it's about, you know,

Janice Porter: 00:18:04

gratitude, or it's about, you know, trusting people and

Janice Porter: 00:18:07

staying connected and all of that good stuff. So thank you.

Janice Porter: 00:18:12

Thank you for for that. And okay, just a minute, there was

Janice Porter: 00:18:17

something else around that I wanted to ask you. Well, let's

Janice Porter: 00:18:23

go to, let's go back to staying visible. Because it's important

Janice Porter: 00:18:29

that we stay visible in the marketplace, that we're in front

Janice Porter: 00:18:31

of the people that we want to be in front of, in a, in a in a

Janice Porter: 00:18:37

useful way. But what are the common mistakes that businesses

Janice Porter: 00:18:41

make that cause them to lose visibility. And how do you help

Janice Porter: 00:18:45

them address these issues? So salespeople, it's, it's kind of

Janice Porter: 00:18:51

an important thing that they stay in front of people. And

Janice Porter: 00:18:56

we've all, I find we forget the follow up, or we forget to come

Janice Porter: 00:19:01

back to people that we've you know, spent the time opening the

Janice Porter: 00:19:04

door with. Do you find that with your people that you train?

Janice Porter: 00:19:08

Yeah, what

Karen Gunther: 00:19:09

I would where I would say that's, that's a very

Karen Gunther: 00:19:12

large subject. So let me, let me contain my subject. Let me

Karen Gunther: 00:19:15

contain my comments to the sales rep. Because there's a lot of

Karen Gunther: 00:19:19

different there's a lot of different areas to that subject.

Karen Gunther: 00:19:23

When I contain my comments to the sales rep, specifically, I

Karen Gunther: 00:19:27

would see failure to use a CRM, be it HubSpot, gold mine,

Karen Gunther: 00:19:36

Salesforce, whatever it is, I'm a Salesforce baby. So I'm a

Karen Gunther: 00:19:40

Salesforce girl, and I find it to be very helpful. And what I

Karen Gunther: 00:19:47

can't remember everything, and neither can anybody else. So

Karen Gunther: 00:19:50

based on that, the sales reps need to use some sort of CRM,

Karen Gunther: 00:19:55

because you're having to contact so many people, so many times

Karen Gunther: 00:19:59

with. So many different messages that you want to be able to

Karen Gunther: 00:20:02

track what you've done, how often you've done it, when

Karen Gunther: 00:20:05

you've done it, so that you know that you're not pestering the

Karen Gunther: 00:20:07

person too much or too little, and that you provide and you

Karen Gunther: 00:20:10

schedule those tasks for yourself, so that sales, sales

Karen Gunther: 00:20:14

force, or the CRM that you're using becomes your brain to

Karen Gunther: 00:20:17

remind you, so that when you get in in the morning, okay, I have

Karen Gunther: 00:20:20

these 10 things I need to do today, and then you set your

Karen Gunther: 00:20:22

next tasks, you know, for whatever the future dates are

Karen Gunther: 00:20:25

for those so that you're feeding into the system, so that over

Karen Gunther: 00:20:29

time, the first half hour of the day is 100% spent doing specific

Karen Gunther: 00:20:34

prospecting based on previous actions. And I find that most

Karen Gunther: 00:20:39

sales people are reticent to use their CRM tool. But I must say,

Karen Gunther: 00:20:43

this new generation, this Gen Z, that's coming into the

Karen Gunther: 00:20:46

workforce, they are completely willing to use a CRM, which I

Karen Gunther: 00:20:50

have found that to be really gratifying and so much easier to

Karen Gunther: 00:20:54

work with Gen X. Heck no, that's my generation. Nope. We have no

Karen Gunther: 00:20:58

interest in doing that. Millennials are kind of

Karen Gunther: 00:21:01

interested, but only if they see how, based on my experience, and

Karen Gunther: 00:21:04

see how it benefits them, and only if they can see that, and

Karen Gunther: 00:21:08

then the the Gen Z's what I've noticed when they come into

Karen Gunther: 00:21:11

they're like, Okay, this is a tech tool I get to use cool.

Karen Gunther: 00:21:13

They does it for me, great, and they just move into it, and

Karen Gunther: 00:21:16

they've got no problem. And I've been really gratified to work

Karen Gunther: 00:21:19

with the new generation coming into sales, I was a little

Karen Gunther: 00:21:23

concerned at first, but

Janice Porter: 00:21:26

okay, so they like the tech things because

Janice Porter: 00:21:28

they grew up with it and they're comfortable with it. How the

Janice Porter: 00:21:31

people skills? Zero? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah,

Janice Porter: 00:21:36

yeah,

Karen Gunther: 00:21:36

absolutely zero people skills. So you have to

Karen Gunther: 00:21:38

train them more on how to talk. So what I do for that is the

Karen Gunther: 00:21:42

second thing that I find that people don't do that they should

Karen Gunther: 00:21:45

be doing, is they should be practicing more. So the most

Karen Gunther: 00:21:48

important thing you can do to practice is to take your phone,

Karen Gunther: 00:21:51

put it into Voice Memo mode, work with some sort of AI or

Karen Gunther: 00:21:55

yourself to create some sort of script that you can use. Not

Karen Gunther: 00:21:58

that you're going to only use a script, but it gives you

Karen Gunther: 00:22:00

something to work with, to start with, because if you don't know

Karen Gunther: 00:22:03

a product, you have to start somewhere. You need to bone up

Karen Gunther: 00:22:06

on the product. You need to understand the you know, the

Karen Gunther: 00:22:08

brochures and the information and why it benefits the client.

Karen Gunther: 00:22:12

And you need to go through and use that voice memo function on

Karen Gunther: 00:22:15

your phone, because there's something about saying the

Karen Gunther: 00:22:18

script when you are just reading it. I could just pick up a piece

Karen Gunther: 00:22:21

of paper and read it or read it off a monitor, but when you have

Karen Gunther: 00:22:24

that voice memo on and you've got that record on, it changes

Karen Gunther: 00:22:27

everything in the brain, and all of a sudden everything's engaged

Karen Gunther: 00:22:30

and you're practicing, how do these words come out of my

Karen Gunther: 00:22:33

mouth?

Janice Porter: 00:22:34

How do I sound? Do I sound authentic? Does it

Janice Porter: 00:22:37

sound authentic?

Karen Gunther: 00:22:37

Exactly, exactly? And then what happens from that

Karen Gunther: 00:22:41

is you're like, Oh, I'm stumbling over saying don't or

Karen Gunther: 00:22:44

do not. You know, I find that contractions work well when

Karen Gunther: 00:22:47

you're speaking, but not when you're writing. So I tend to not

Karen Gunther: 00:22:51

use contractions when I write, but I will use contractions when

Karen Gunther: 00:22:55

I speak. So it's just a difference between speaking and

Karen Gunther: 00:22:58

writing and learning. What does that sound like, and does this

Karen Gunther: 00:23:01

sound correct? So where are people not taking advantage of

Karen Gunther: 00:23:04

opportunities? They're not using CRMs. They're not practicing,

Karen Gunther: 00:23:10

you know, in a live situation where they can hear themselves

Karen Gunther: 00:23:13

and going back and verifying. And the other thing that I find

Karen Gunther: 00:23:17

that people don't do that they should be doing more of is

Karen Gunther: 00:23:20

continuing to learn. Oh, really, just the constant learning there

Karen Gunther: 00:23:25

is, there are so many different ways to learn. There are so many

Karen Gunther: 00:23:28

different ways to improve your skills. Mm, hmm, in all areas of

Karen Gunther: 00:23:34

not only your life, but in your business, aspect of how to do

Karen Gunther: 00:23:38

this better, how to do that better. You know, constantly

Karen Gunther: 00:23:40

learning, you know, listening to podcasts like yours and others,

Karen Gunther: 00:23:44

where you can pick up one more thing of, oh, I didn't think to

Karen Gunther: 00:23:46

do it like that. I remember I had this large meeting that I

Karen Gunther: 00:23:50

was going into, and I really wanted to sound smart. Wanted to

Karen Gunther: 00:23:54

make sure I had all the questions. So I went into my my

Karen Gunther: 00:23:59

podcast app, and I typed in, you know, how to whatever it was,

Karen Gunther: 00:24:03

how to do something or another in a sales call, and, like,

Karen Gunther: 00:24:06

three or four different podcasts, you know, pulled up

Karen Gunther: 00:24:08

ones I've never listened to before, and I was in the

Karen Gunther: 00:24:10

airport, so I took the time to listen to them, and I was busy

Karen Gunther: 00:24:14

taking notes, and I was ready when I had that meeting to ask

Karen Gunther: 00:24:17

some of those questions. So I sounded really smart, and I

Karen Gunther: 00:24:20

actually got really good information. So now those

Karen Gunther: 00:24:22

questions are part of what I do. But it was really interesting

Karen Gunther: 00:24:25

because it was like, Okay, I better bone up on this. I better

Karen Gunther: 00:24:27

learn. There's so many resources out there right now that you

Karen Gunther: 00:24:31

know, something that people don't do, that they should be

Karen Gunther: 00:24:33

doing, is continuing to sharpen that, sharpen that sword. You

Karen Gunther: 00:24:38

know,

Janice Porter: 00:24:39

I'm, I'm surprised that you said that, in

Janice Porter: 00:24:41

a way, because we have so much at our fingertips today to

Janice Porter: 00:24:46

answer whatever question. I mean, if I if I'm watching

Janice Porter: 00:24:50

Jeopardy, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I

Janice Porter: 00:24:55

don't understand something, or I don't know the I'll go and right

Janice Porter: 00:24:58

away on my phone and. Find out more about it, or if I'm, you

Janice Porter: 00:25:01

know, whatever I'm crossword puzzles, whatever it is I'm

Janice Porter: 00:25:05

doing, I want to find out more, or just something I hear on

Janice Porter: 00:25:08

television that I want to know more about. But we also are so

Janice Porter: 00:25:14

busy today. Now, I'm also surprised, though, because the

Janice Porter: 00:25:18

young people are the the Gen Z's you were just referring to. They

Janice Porter: 00:25:24

were brought up on their phones. And they go to it for

Janice Porter: 00:25:26

everything. So I think they go to

Karen Gunther: 00:25:29

it for entertainment, yeah, with their

Karen Gunther: 00:25:32

friends, but not for business purpose, and not to learn,

Janice Porter: 00:25:35

not to learn interesting. Yes, that really,

Janice Porter: 00:25:38

that's really interesting. And, and then the other thing, when

Janice Porter: 00:25:43

you said, you just said, they go to it to communicate with their

Janice Porter: 00:25:46

friends, which is, like the most passive communication piece

Janice Porter: 00:25:49

there is, right? Which is why they're not good at social

Janice Porter: 00:25:51

skills. Which is so when you have a client like that, a sales

Janice Porter: 00:25:57

rep that you're that you're talking to, like that, how do

Janice Porter: 00:26:00

you bring them around? Because are they going to say, Oh, sure,

Janice Porter: 00:26:03

I'm going to practice this on my phone, talking to myself. Or do

Janice Porter: 00:26:06

they willingly do it? Or do you have to push? I

Karen Gunther: 00:26:10

have to push. I have to say, I have to have them

Karen Gunther: 00:26:11

set goals. I have to have them practice. And I ask them how the

Karen Gunther: 00:26:14

experience was. So they go off and they do it on their own. The

Karen Gunther: 00:26:17

next time I meet with them, how was that? What did you learn? So

Karen Gunther: 00:26:20

I asked the probing questions, what did you learn by doing it?

Karen Gunther: 00:26:23

And you can tell really quick if they're lying, yeah, you know.

Karen Gunther: 00:26:26

But most of the time, because it's a tech thing and it's a new

Karen Gunther: 00:26:29

way to use technology, they already like using it's kind of

Karen Gunther: 00:26:32

like, oh, I can do that. Oh, that's cool. I'm going to try

Karen Gunther: 00:26:35

that, because they're really so interested in learning, but they

Karen Gunther: 00:26:38

just don't know all of the resources. And you would think,

Karen Gunther: 00:26:40

well, God, they have a phone in their hands. Well, they don't

Karen Gunther: 00:26:42

use the well, they don't use those apps. Yeah, you know. So

Karen Gunther: 00:26:45

if you introduce them to the apps, they're like, Oh, okay.

Karen Gunther: 00:26:47

I'd say, when you're driving, you know, listen to the podcast,

Karen Gunther: 00:26:50

and don't do it every time. And go listen to music and take a

Karen Gunther: 00:26:52

break and let your brain relax, for sure, but at least once a

Karen Gunther: 00:26:56

day, be listening to something.

Janice Porter: 00:26:57

You know, it's so funny. Do you see how old I am

Janice Porter: 00:27:00

when I say this, but it reminded me what you just said of when I

Janice Porter: 00:27:03

was at the telephone company and I was training soft, what we

Janice Porter: 00:27:08

called soft skills, to receptionists, and one of the

Janice Porter: 00:27:12

things that I used to do is sit with the receptionist and listen

Janice Porter: 00:27:15

to how they answered the phone and listen to their voice and

Janice Porter: 00:27:17

whatever. And I would say to you know, the odd one. Have you ever

Janice Porter: 00:27:22

heard yourself on the phone? And I would give them something to

Janice Porter: 00:27:26

to say, and I say, you know, or they had to record the the

Janice Porter: 00:27:31

greeting on the voicemail system, or whatever. And I say,

Janice Porter: 00:27:34

you know, go home, go in your bathroom. Don't let anybody hear

Janice Porter: 00:27:37

you and record yourself. And then listen to what you sound

Janice Porter: 00:27:40

like and you'll know whether you need to change it or not. That's

Janice Porter: 00:27:43

what you used to have to do in the old days, right? And it

Janice Porter: 00:27:45

wasn't as easy because he didn't have a phone too. You had to get

Janice Porter: 00:27:48

a little tape recorder Exactly. Yeah, I understand all that, but

Janice Porter: 00:27:53

it's just so interesting, okay? And it just, there's just so

Janice Porter: 00:27:59

many interesting things that the kids today, the kids today, the

Janice Porter: 00:28:02

young people today, do so differently than than we do and

Janice Porter: 00:28:07

but so much

Karen Gunther: 00:28:07

is the same in terms of how business works. It

Karen Gunther: 00:28:11

was interesting. I just was meeting with a student. You

Karen Gunther: 00:28:13

mentioned that I mentor students. I mentor students at

Karen Gunther: 00:28:15

the local school, they have a course specifically for how to

Karen Gunther: 00:28:19

integrate the students into a professional life, yeah. And

Karen Gunther: 00:28:23

which is great. So I was talking to the student today, and he

Karen Gunther: 00:28:28

said, Oh, by the way. I said, Is there anything else? Because

Karen Gunther: 00:28:30

we're wrapping up. He said, Yeah, one more thing. He says,

Karen Gunther: 00:28:32

You do marketing stuff, right? I said, Yeah. And he wants to go

Karen Gunther: 00:28:35

into the supply chain, and so it's nothing to do with

Karen Gunther: 00:28:37

marketing. He says, Well, I was just at this event last week,

Karen Gunther: 00:28:41

and I think they need help with their marketing. Is it okay if I

Karen Gunther: 00:28:44

present the information? I said, Oh, what event was it? And he

Karen Gunther: 00:28:47

told me. I said, oh, and I held up my phone and I said, I'm

Karen Gunther: 00:28:49

already texting with the executive director of that

Karen Gunther: 00:28:52

organization. I started working with them two days ago. Oh,

Karen Gunther: 00:28:55

that's so funny, because I and by the way, the person you met

Karen Gunther: 00:28:58

with, you know, three weeks ago at the networking event. Was

Karen Gunther: 00:29:01

also at that event, but she was in the wrong place, so you

Karen Gunther: 00:29:03

didn't recognize her. So now you have a way to go back to her,

Karen Gunther: 00:29:06

you know. So now we have this total connection. I said, if you

Karen Gunther: 00:29:09

could please do me a favor, could you please let that person

Karen Gunther: 00:29:13

know that you know me and make the recommendations? And now

Karen Gunther: 00:29:16

he's hearing from two people that I'm a good person to work

Karen Gunther: 00:29:18

with, right? Well, that person turned around immediately sent

Karen Gunther: 00:29:21

me that text not an hour ago. Nice, nice saying, oh, this

Karen Gunther: 00:29:26

person recommended you as well. I mean, isn't that it? And isn't

Karen Gunther: 00:29:29

that the way? So business still works that way. It's all of who

Karen Gunther: 00:29:32

you know. And I think that the the incoming you know, business

Karen Gunther: 00:29:37

professionals very much value what their who, their network

Karen Gunther: 00:29:41

knows more so than anything. It's surprising to me that you

Karen Gunther: 00:29:47

would think that they would just go online and find sources, but

Karen Gunther: 00:29:49

they don't. They talk to their the people around them,

Karen Gunther: 00:29:53

certainly

Janice Porter: 00:29:54

the the business students learn that faster. I

Janice Porter: 00:29:58

remember doing a. Uh, going up to with the local university for

Janice Porter: 00:30:03

their MBA students had an event, and it was to teach them how to

Janice Porter: 00:30:07

network properly, and they wanted some business

Janice Porter: 00:30:09

professionals there to to help with the the situation in the in

Janice Porter: 00:30:14

the event, and there were a lot of accounting students and a lot

Janice Porter: 00:30:19

of pharmacy students, and they struggled. They struggled with

Janice Porter: 00:30:24

what to say in a networking setup, or whatever. The business

Janice Porter: 00:30:27

students, I think, have to come about. They have to learn, or

Janice Porter: 00:30:31

they do learn more quickly how important it is to build your

Janice Porter: 00:30:35

network, yes, but yeah, but yeah. Today it's a lot of them

Janice Porter: 00:30:40

were struggling with that and, and, and it's fun to be able to

Janice Porter: 00:30:43

share with them, you know, conversation, or to to show by

Janice Porter: 00:30:48

having those conversations with them in the groups, and they

Janice Porter: 00:30:50

start to see how much easier it can be to to build rapport with

Janice Porter: 00:30:55

people and to talk with them. But, yeah, it's, that's the

Janice Porter: 00:30:59

thing I love to to look at and and so and networking today.

Janice Porter: 00:31:04

What do you think about you know, we got so much away from

Janice Porter: 00:31:07

face to face networking, at least I did, because I've rarely

Janice Porter: 00:31:11

gone back to the face to face thing since, since the COVID

Janice Porter: 00:31:16

disaster, and I stay online, mostly doing it on LinkedIn, but

Janice Porter: 00:31:20

then having one to ones with people. What's your take on

Janice Porter: 00:31:23

that? Are people seeing that they need to be out there in

Janice Porter: 00:31:27

front of people? Or are they doing it online? Are they using

Janice Porter: 00:31:29

LinkedIn? Or all

Karen Gunther: 00:31:30

of I think that the sphere of networking has

Karen Gunther: 00:31:35

expanded. It used to be in person, and that was it was

Karen Gunther: 00:31:40

starting to be more on LinkedIn prior to the pandemic. It

Karen Gunther: 00:31:45

switched to online during the pandemic, and now that people

Karen Gunther: 00:31:50

are able to get back together, people are craving the

Karen Gunther: 00:31:53

opportunity to be in person with people. Yeah, somehow. Mono, so

Karen Gunther: 00:31:59

I think there's a lot to be said for attending networking events,

Karen Gunther: 00:32:03

because people want to be there and they want to meet with

Karen Gunther: 00:32:07

people. They're craving that, that one on one interaction

Karen Gunther: 00:32:10

with, you know, another human being, you know, just standing

Karen Gunther: 00:32:13

in front of rather than just the computer. But in addition to

Karen Gunther: 00:32:15

that, we've also layered on the LinkedIn and the virtual

Karen Gunther: 00:32:21

connections as well. I mean, so it's like, it's like the

Karen Gunther: 00:32:26

pandemic tripled our opportunities. That's right,

Janice Porter: 00:32:29

that's what I thought, too. Something that you

Janice Porter: 00:32:32

when you were talking about your clients practicing with the

Janice Porter: 00:32:38

their phone, it made me think of the the value today of voice

Janice Porter: 00:32:44

messaging as well as video messaging. It makes you stand

Janice Porter: 00:32:47

out from the crowd. Do you teach them? Do you teach your people

Janice Porter: 00:32:50

to do that as well?

Karen Gunther: 00:32:52

Yeah, absolutely. I use, there's a lot of

Karen Gunther: 00:32:54

platforms out there. I use loom. I don't have any paper

Karen Gunther: 00:32:58

promotional for them. It's just, it's just what I learned on and

Karen Gunther: 00:33:01

I like it, and it's easy, and it's one of the few platforms

Karen Gunther: 00:33:04

that I do pay for, because I do like having that option to have

Karen Gunther: 00:33:07

as many videos as I want. And I create loom videos all the time

Karen Gunther: 00:33:11

for training purposes, Okay, number one, to provide people

Karen Gunther: 00:33:15

with how to do things. And then I do also use it as for sales

Karen Gunther: 00:33:18

purpose to and I train salespeople on how to use it for

Karen Gunther: 00:33:21

sales purpose, so people can show what they want to share

Karen Gunther: 00:33:25

about with a prospect. As opposed to just leaving a

Karen Gunther: 00:33:28

voicemail message, they're actually having their face

Karen Gunther: 00:33:30

there. They're having visual for people to look at. It's really

Karen Gunther: 00:33:33

powerful.

Janice Porter: 00:33:34

Is it easier than doing it than not just doing it

Janice Porter: 00:33:36

on Zoom? Like is significantly easier. Okay, I've used it once

Janice Porter: 00:33:41

or twice, but I've never really looked into it. So maybe because

Janice Porter: 00:33:43

I I know sometimes I'll say to a client who I've just brought on

Janice Porter: 00:33:49

to send out cards, I want you to be aware of the back of the

Janice Porter: 00:33:53

card, blah, blah, blah, and do this, I'll send you a short

Janice Porter: 00:33:55

video just to keep to show you what I mean, and I've destined

Janice Porter: 00:34:00

it on Zoom, but, oh,

Karen Gunther: 00:34:02

I would do that on loom, because you're using

Karen Gunther: 00:34:04

their their platform as the basis point. And it's wonderful

Karen Gunther: 00:34:09

because you can use it on your phone. You can if you're what I

Karen Gunther: 00:34:11

find is fascinating. So for people who are in a

Karen Gunther: 00:34:14

manufacturing setting, and many of my clients are manufacturing

Karen Gunther: 00:34:17

settings, so you're sitting there and you're with a client,

Karen Gunther: 00:34:20

and the client is saying it's making this weird noise. You

Karen Gunther: 00:34:24

know, manufacturers like, there's no way it can make that

Karen Gunther: 00:34:27

weird noise. It's just not physically possible, right? So

Karen Gunther: 00:34:31

you pull out the loom video, you show the client there, you start

Karen Gunther: 00:34:35

the button, you show the client, and you have the video. They see

Karen Gunther: 00:34:37

the part running and all this stuff, and then the weird noise

Karen Gunther: 00:34:40

happens, right? And then you send it, and they're like,

Janice Porter: 00:34:42

oh, oh.

Karen Gunther: 00:34:45

And there it is. And it just, it just stops it.

Karen Gunther: 00:34:48

And one of the things that loom says is their little branding

Karen Gunther: 00:34:51

thing, their marketing thing, they do, we just saved you a

Karen Gunther: 00:34:53

meeting. You know, they really do, because I have a virtual

Karen Gunther: 00:34:57

assistant who works out of the Philippines, so we're on

Karen Gunther: 00:34:59

different time. Schedules. So from one o'clock on my time, I'm

Karen Gunther: 00:35:03

separate from him, and if I have things and I work until 10

Karen Gunther: 00:35:05

o'clock at night, because my husband works second shift, so

Karen Gunther: 00:35:08

that works for me. So I'll go through and I'll create a bunch

Karen Gunther: 00:35:11

of work for him. I'll do it on loom, I'll show him everything,

Karen Gunther: 00:35:14

and I'll send it to him, and he'll when he gets in and when

Karen Gunther: 00:35:17

he starts his shift, he just looks at everything, and it

Karen Gunther: 00:35:20

reports back to me that he's looked at it, so I know he's

Karen Gunther: 00:35:22

engaged.

Janice Porter: 00:35:24

And boom, okay, that's good.

Karen Gunther: 00:35:27

It's really exciting, because you can

Karen Gunther: 00:35:29

actually see what's happening. And when you use it for sales,

Karen Gunther: 00:35:31

let's say I want to sell you email marketing. Jenna, so I go

Karen Gunther: 00:35:35

through and I do this little presentation. It's like a three

Karen Gunther: 00:35:37

or four slide thing on PowerPoint, and I have my little

Karen Gunther: 00:35:39

face there, and I'm talking, and I have all this wonderful stuff

Karen Gunther: 00:35:42

happening, right? And I take this video and I send it to you,

Karen Gunther: 00:35:46

I see when you opened it, and I can see time you spent on it,

Karen Gunther: 00:35:52

yeah, I know when that happened, and so I need to follow up with

Karen Gunther: 00:35:55

you later that day or the following day. Yeah, that's

Karen Gunther: 00:35:58

beautiful. Or if you haven't opened it, maybe the video, the

Karen Gunther: 00:36:01

email didn't go through, yes? So I can say, Gosh, I'm not sure if

Karen Gunther: 00:36:05

you got this email, you know, but I want to make sure you saw

Karen Gunther: 00:36:08

this, you know, yeah.

Janice Porter: 00:36:09

Oh, that's awesome. Those all these little

Janice Porter: 00:36:11

tricks, right? Using technology

Karen Gunther: 00:36:14

to make our lives easier, that's my mantra.

Janice Porter: 00:36:18

So okay, we've let me just ask you this quick

Janice Porter: 00:36:21

question. So if you set a meeting with somebody on a

Janice Porter: 00:36:23

Calendly or whatever calendar link that you use, does that

Janice Porter: 00:36:29

calendar link attach to your zoom or does because mine isn't

Janice Porter: 00:36:37

working properly. So

Karen Gunther: 00:36:38

we have, so I have found a way to do that,

Karen Gunther: 00:36:41

because, like you, I have a specific meeting code that I

Karen Gunther: 00:36:44

use. You have your, you know, zoom with Janice meeting code,

Karen Gunther: 00:36:47

and I have my specific meeting code that I use, and I have my

Karen Gunther: 00:36:50

meeting set up in a very particular way so that I can use

Karen Gunther: 00:36:53

it ongoing and it stays specific to that. So when I set up a

Karen Gunther: 00:36:58

meeting, I have it set up in my Calendly, because I do use

Karen Gunther: 00:37:00

Calendly, but that's what I'm missing. You can set it up with

Karen Gunther: 00:37:03

any of the services, and even if you do it through Outlook or

Karen Gunther: 00:37:07

Gmail or however you manage your email or your calendar, you can

Karen Gunther: 00:37:11

set it up so that the calendar link goes through, and heart has

Karen Gunther: 00:37:14

that templated information in there, so the person can just,

Karen Gunther: 00:37:17

you know, and it'll come through. And you have to set it

Karen Gunther: 00:37:21

up in a very particular very particular way. Again, I was

Karen Gunther: 00:37:25

working with a client this morning, explaining how to do

Karen Gunther: 00:37:27

this so that you can do informational interviews. And it

Karen Gunther: 00:37:30

was information, and I said this, and I showed him my

Karen Gunther: 00:37:33

screen. I said, Here it is. Take a screenshot so you can set up

Karen Gunther: 00:37:37

yours the same way. Because if you set this up correctly, and

Karen Gunther: 00:37:40

you do it one and done, then you don't have to think about it

Karen Gunther: 00:37:43

again exactly. It just makes your life so much easier.

Karen Gunther: 00:37:45

There's no fretting, there's no worrying. There's no did they

Karen Gunther: 00:37:49

have the right thing? And especially when it comes to

Karen Gunther: 00:37:50

these, you know, teams, or zoom, or any of these platforms, as

Karen Gunther: 00:37:55

soon as you you know, you have to think about it. Can my 95

Karen Gunther: 00:37:59

year old, you know, grandmother, yeah, get on a meeting with me

Karen Gunther: 00:38:02

if the answer is no, because it's a weird password that you

Karen Gunther: 00:38:05

have to hit Shift to get to the, you know, the ampersand or

Karen Gunther: 00:38:07

whatever. I mean, it's like, no, we have to make it as easy as

Karen Gunther: 00:38:10

possible because it's so hard to sell. Yeah, we have to make it

Karen Gunther: 00:38:14

as easy as possible and let tech make it easy for us to be

Karen Gunther: 00:38:18

accessible.

Janice Porter: 00:38:20

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We'll have to talk

Janice Porter: 00:38:21

about that offline, because I think it's one little thing I'm

Janice Porter: 00:38:24

missing. That's what I think it is. And I know that you're a wiz

Janice Porter: 00:38:27

with chat GPT. You love using that tool, and that has saved

Janice Porter: 00:38:31

you a lot of time and hard. It made me a lot of money. Yeah,

Janice Porter: 00:38:36

really, yeah. Okay. What's the three top things you do with it.

Karen Gunther: 00:38:42

I have the paid version. Yes, so do i for $20 a

Karen Gunther: 00:38:46

month right now, and November 24 that's how much it costs the and

Karen Gunther: 00:38:52

the reason I do that is I have, do not have unlimited bandwidth

Karen Gunther: 00:38:56

to do to do chats. I do not have that because nothing has that

Karen Gunther: 00:39:00

that I'm aware of, but I have more options than somebody who's

Karen Gunther: 00:39:04

on the free program, so it allows me more opportunity to do

Karen Gunther: 00:39:07

more. I'm also able, with a paid version to create what's called

Karen Gunther: 00:39:11

the custom GPT. Because I do marketing, I set up LinkedIn

Karen Gunther: 00:39:15

posts, blog posts, website content pages, refreshes,

Karen Gunther: 00:39:20

LinkedIn profile. I have certain things that are already set up.

Karen Gunther: 00:39:23

So all I need to do is put in just two or three pieces of

Karen Gunther: 00:39:26

information and it'll spit out what I need in a close

Karen Gunther: 00:39:30

representation. Because it gets not, you know, 80 90% of the way

Karen Gunther: 00:39:33

there. You have to check it and, you know, make it right, but it

Karen Gunther: 00:39:37

gets you most of the way there. And so I have the paid version

Karen Gunther: 00:39:42

so I can have more opportunity to use it more often without

Karen Gunther: 00:39:45

being stopped. Two to be able to create the custom gpts, which

Karen Gunther: 00:39:48

already has the information parameters in there. It already

Karen Gunther: 00:39:52

has all the instructions in there, and then. So those are

Karen Gunther: 00:39:55

the, you know, yeah, those two things because I just use it all

Karen Gunther: 00:39:58

the time. So you asked to go to the top. Things. The third thing

Karen Gunther: 00:40:01

that I would suggest is continuously learning how to use

Karen Gunther: 00:40:06

it. Most people think, Oh, I'm just going to use it to write an

Karen Gunther: 00:40:10

email. It's like, oh, did you know that you could take this

Karen Gunther: 00:40:13

brochure, attach it to the chat, even on the free version, you

Karen Gunther: 00:40:19

can, you know, attach it brochure and say, Please create

Karen Gunther: 00:40:22

a presentation for me, a written presentation to send to a client

Karen Gunther: 00:40:26

regarding this product. This is their situation. And it'll,

Karen Gunther: 00:40:30

poof. It'll bring out an entire proposal for you. Wow. Number

Karen Gunther: 00:40:33

one, I know it's pretty amazing. It will create PowerPoints for

Karen Gunther: 00:40:36

you. It will create, it will literally create Word documents

Karen Gunther: 00:40:39

and excel sheets. It will actually output to those

Karen Gunther: 00:40:43

documents. There are so many different ways, if you can think

Karen Gunther: 00:40:47

about I've had it create, I've had it plan trips for me. I just

Karen Gunther: 00:40:49

came back from a trip to Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska to go see the

Karen Gunther: 00:40:52

northern lights, and it was fabulous. And it literally found

Karen Gunther: 00:40:56

the place that we stayed at. I wouldn't have sounded otherwise,

Karen Gunther: 00:41:00

you know. So it was really interesting. So the how it can

Karen Gunther: 00:41:03

be used. So what I do is I consistently keep up, either on

Karen Gunther: 00:41:06

YouTube or through articles that I see online, of the new

Karen Gunther: 00:41:12

features, and I listen, and I join peer groups where I can

Karen Gunther: 00:41:15

listen and see how are people using this technology. I'm of a

Karen Gunther: 00:41:21

mind, and I'm old enough to remember when cell phones were

Karen Gunther: 00:41:24

the size of a shoe box, yeah, back in the early 90s, and they

Karen Gunther: 00:41:28

went really small, and now they're larger again, thank God

Karen Gunther: 00:41:31

so I can read the screen, yeah. And what happens is, is that I

Karen Gunther: 00:41:34

think chat GBT is the shoe box cell phone right now, and it

Karen Gunther: 00:41:40

will transition and shift and change as we go. So I need to be

Karen Gunther: 00:41:43

able to transition, shift and change along with it, and need

Karen Gunther: 00:41:46

to learn how to use it every time I think I don't know if

Karen Gunther: 00:41:49

chat GP can do it, I just throw it in interesting that's the

Karen Gunther: 00:41:52

question, just to see why not. Well?

Janice Porter: 00:41:55

And that's another example of always

Janice Porter: 00:41:57

learning and lifelong learning and being ahead of the game and

Janice Porter: 00:42:01

ahead of your clients, right? This is so much fun. So I'm just

Janice Porter: 00:42:05

going to shift a little bit before we wrap up, because I

Janice Porter: 00:42:08

know that you just started doing Wordle, and I've been doing it

Janice Porter: 00:42:13

for a long time, and I got stumped on it today, and I was

Janice Porter: 00:42:16

so mad. So do you do it every day?

Karen Gunther: 00:42:19

Not every day? I'd say four out of seven days

Karen Gunther: 00:42:22

of the week. Okay, so every

Janice Porter: 00:42:23

morning, when having my cup of tea, usually,

Janice Porter: 00:42:26

usually every day, I'll do Wordle, and then I do two of the

Janice Porter: 00:42:31

puzzles in LinkedIn. I do this, I forget the names, pinpoint,

Janice Porter: 00:42:38

and I do the other one, the cross climb. And I do those

Janice Porter: 00:42:40

every day, and it only takes me maybe 10 minutes, max at you

Janice Porter: 00:42:44

know, to do them. But I just, I love the the challenge, and I

Janice Porter: 00:42:47

love to do puzzles anyway. Now I think I'm going to start doing

Janice Porter: 00:42:51

Spelling Bee, but that takes longer, and that's a New York

Janice Porter: 00:42:53

Times one as well. And because I'm a word person and crosswords

Janice Porter: 00:42:59

at night, so it's fun to see that you're doing them so on.

Janice Porter: 00:43:03

Have you ever done any of the LinkedIn games?

Karen Gunther: 00:43:05

No, I've actually turned off the opportunity. I

Karen Gunther: 00:43:09

mean, I turned off the notifications to do that because

Karen Gunther: 00:43:11

I don't do games. I mean, I do games. What do I do? Spider,

Karen Gunther: 00:43:14

which is a version of solitaire. I do that. Oh yeah, I do the

Karen Gunther: 00:43:17

I've started doing the Wordle. But it's what's interesting for

Karen Gunther: 00:43:20

me about the Wordle is that I need to actually not be

Karen Gunther: 00:43:23

listening to a book, or I have to actually think about it. And

Karen Gunther: 00:43:28

sometimes I have to pull out a piece of paper and write the

Karen Gunther: 00:43:30

words, which is trying to figure

Janice Porter: 00:43:32

that's funny. Well, the thing that I like

Janice Porter: 00:43:34

about, and I've only done it a couple of times, but the thing

Janice Porter: 00:43:37

that I like about the word games that LinkedIn has brought in is

Janice Porter: 00:43:42

you can actually use it as another networking tool, because

Janice Porter: 00:43:47

it shows you who of your connections has done the puzzle.

Janice Porter: 00:43:51

Wow. So you can ask more interesting now, yeah, so you

Janice Porter: 00:43:55

can see who's you know, doing like you, and you can reach out

Janice Porter: 00:43:58

to them if you want. So that's kind of fun and different. Okay,

Janice Porter: 00:44:02

last question, and I'm sure you'll have an answer for this.

Janice Porter: 00:44:08

So curiosity is my favorite word, and I love to ask

Janice Porter: 00:44:12

occasionally two things. One, it's two. Part question. One, do

Janice Porter: 00:44:17

you think curiosity is innate or learned. And part two, what are

Janice Porter: 00:44:22

you most curious about today? And you don't have to overthink

Janice Porter: 00:44:29

it, because there's no

Karen Gunther: 00:44:30

writing or learned. I'm going to say it's

Karen Gunther: 00:44:32

5050, it's nature, nurture, right? Yeah. And I think that if

Karen Gunther: 00:44:38

somebody, somebody either has natural curiosity and they

Karen Gunther: 00:44:42

pursue things just as a general rule. But I also do think that

Karen Gunther: 00:44:46

if you start young or start somebody at any age, quite

Karen Gunther: 00:44:52

frankly, on the path of how to be more curious about things,

Karen Gunther: 00:44:55

and the benefits of that and what happens as a result of

Karen Gunther: 00:44:57

being more curious, I. I think it could be very much a learned

Karen Gunther: 00:45:03

item. And I think that's what I try to teach people when I work

Karen Gunther: 00:45:06

with them in the sales training, is how to be curious. How do you

Karen Gunther: 00:45:08

be curious about how to do things differently, right? Yes.

Karen Gunther: 00:45:12

And then, what am I curious about today? I am. I'm curious

Karen Gunther: 00:45:21

about, literally, like you're asking me, and I'm telling an

Karen Gunther: 00:45:24

answer. I'm curious about 2025, because I'm starting to think

Karen Gunther: 00:45:28

now, because it's, you know, in the middle of November, to how

Karen Gunther: 00:45:32

to, how to plan my year. You know, I you and I have talked

Karen Gunther: 00:45:37

about a a program that I'm putting together to reach out to

Karen Gunther: 00:45:40

reach out to my clients monthly. I'm going to be using the Send

Karen Gunther: 00:45:43

Out Cards that you talk about to reach my clients as well with

Karen Gunther: 00:45:46

that. And I'm curious to see how that program comes together,

Karen Gunther: 00:45:50

because I think it'll be really impactful to my business. But I

Karen Gunther: 00:45:53

haven't yet fully formulated that, so it's always in the back

Karen Gunther: 00:45:57

of my mind of, how am I going to put this together?

Janice Porter: 00:46:00

Well, just know that I'm happy to have that

Janice Porter: 00:46:03

conversation with you and brainstorm with you about it. I

Janice Porter: 00:46:06

appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm actually talking to a

Janice Porter: 00:46:08

guy tomorrow. This is kind of fun. Um, this person was

Janice Porter: 00:46:11

introduced to me by a podcast company because they send me

Janice Porter: 00:46:15

people all the time, and he to be on my podcast, and I always

Janice Porter: 00:46:19

have an intro call with them first. So we had this intro

Janice Porter: 00:46:22

call. He was great. I said, Let's do it. We're and I've

Janice Porter: 00:46:26

booked him to be on my podcast. But we started talking about one

Janice Porter: 00:46:31

of his companies, and I think he owns, he's a he's a coach, a

Janice Porter: 00:46:36

business coach, but he also has this carpet cleaning company,

Janice Porter: 00:46:40

and I asked him how he you know what? Anyway, I got into

Janice Porter: 00:46:43

conversation with him, and I gave him a couple ideas, and he

Janice Porter: 00:46:48

said, Oh, you and I need to brainstorm some more. I love

Janice Porter: 00:46:50

that. And I sent him a card, and now we're going to talk about

Janice Porter: 00:46:53

the cards in a brainstorming session tomorrow. So wonderful.

Janice Porter: 00:46:58

Yeah, that's kind of fun. So I love doing that. So if you're

Janice Porter: 00:47:00

when you're ready, let me know and and thank you so much for

Janice Porter: 00:47:04

being on on my podcast. I so enjoyed having you as my guest,

Janice Porter: 00:47:08

and I appreciate your expertise and in more ways than you, than

Janice Porter: 00:47:12

you know. So thank you, Janice, so much for having me here. Oh,

Janice Porter: 00:47:15

you're so welcome. Quite fun to have this conversation.

Janice Porter: 00:47:18

Actually, know what I'm really looking forward to you. I know

Janice Porter: 00:47:21

you love to travel, and you're coming up my way next summer,

Janice Porter: 00:47:23

and we're actually going to meet in person. So that's really

Janice Porter: 00:47:26

exciting. And

Karen Gunther: 00:47:27

that's another thing that I do when it comes to

Karen Gunther: 00:47:28

networking, is I let people know where I'm traveling. And you'd

Karen Gunther: 00:47:31

be surprised at how many people know people or are certain

Karen Gunther: 00:47:34

places. And I try to make that connection. I try to, generally,

Karen Gunther: 00:47:37

everywhere I go, in the United States, I try, or the world,

Karen Gunther: 00:47:40

literally, I try to make a connection.

Janice Porter: 00:47:42

Did you do that in Alaska?

Karen Gunther: 00:47:45

Oh no, because we're nowhere. Yeah,

Janice Porter: 00:47:49

okay, okay, there's nobody around, okay, but

Janice Porter: 00:47:52

you had a good time, and you saw the Northern Lights, right? It

Janice Porter: 00:47:54

was fabulous. Oh, fantastic. All right. Well, thank you again for

Janice Porter: 00:47:58

being here, and thank you to my audience for being here, please

Janice Porter: 00:48:01

let us know that you enjoyed the podcast, and Karen will put in

Janice Porter: 00:48:05

the show notes where people can find you. Yes, perfect. And all

Janice Porter: 00:48:08

right, and thanks again, and remember to stay connected and

Janice Porter: 00:48:12

be remembered. You.