Community Questions: September 2024

Community Questions: September 2024

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 171 of the business development podcast. And today is all about you. It's community questions, September, 2024, stick with us. You're not going to want to miss it.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now you're expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 171 of the business development podcast. We are chatting community questions, September 2024. My gosh, guys, you know how much I love community questions episodes. It really is one of the best times with the show because I actually get to communicate with you guys, my rock stars, my audience.

And be able to hopefully do a little bit of poaching with you, which is something that I absolutely love to do. I love to work with you guys. I love to help the BDP Rockstar community and community questions is just a really great way to do that. And I am totally honored. We had probably the most community questions submissions that we have ever had for the show.

And so I want to thank all my Rockstar community out there. Thank you for submitting your questions. Please remember, you can submit questions to us at Anytime podcast@capitalbd.ca, and I will address them on a future community questions episode for you guys. I absolutely love this segment. I started this segment actually just about a year ago to the date.

So it's kind of cool that we've had a full year just about of community questions for the podcast. And I do hope that we can continue to grow the segment and make it bigger and better than ever. And guys, there are no dumb questions. I absolutely love your questions. I will do my best if they are business related, podcast related and business development related to give you my best advice and guys caveat, right?

I'll give you the best advice I can give you from my experience. And I will always try to speak from my experience. There are certain things that make it kind of challenging because I don't always have experience in them, but if that is the case, and I really do not know, I will tell you, or I will try to find an answer for you guys and let you know where I got it from, to be able to hopefully answer your question, but Maybe also give you a caveat that I don't have experience in it.

So guys, I appreciate it. Send in the community questions. It really does help the episode show update. We are sitting at 215, 200 downloads, climbed all the way up to 2700 followers on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And guys, we are taking community questions now for October of 2024. So if you didn't get the message before, I want your community questions.

You can send them to me on LinkedIn via direct message. You can submit them to podcast@capitalbd.ca, or you can also leave us a voicemail on the website, guys. Those are three ways that you can connect with me and submit your community questions. And I very, very much look forward to hearing from you.

I love to hear from my audience. Guys, so if you guys, you know, you can write me about anything. If you have a comment about the show, if you have a show topic, you want me to cover in the next series of show topics, we are heading into the two hundreds guys of the business development podcast by about December of 2024, which is.

Bonkers. I can't believe that we are approaching 200 episodes. I think back to when I started this show and like some of my favorite podcasts had, you know, 200 to 500 episodes. And I remember thinking at the time, my gosh, like that's not real. I like, I wonder what it was like to get there. And well, heck, I guess, I guess I now know, but it's super cool.

It's super cool that we are heading into our 200 episodes of the business development podcast. Like I said, we should be. Crossing that line by December of 2024. And it's been an honor guys. It really has. The show could not have made it this far without your support. We have an amazing audience on the show.

You guys are all rock stars in your own rights. We have business development specialists. We have executives of all types. We have business owners, CEOs, founders, you know, you name it. We got it on the business development podcast and I owe this show to each and every one of you. And so from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming to the show week over week, month over month and coming year over year. Honestly, it means the world to me guys. I could not have come this far without you. I still can't continue this climb without you, but please continue to tell your friends and family.

Tell someone you care about, tell a coworker, let people know we exist. The biggest challenge with any business, including a podcast is. You're just not known. So please spread the word, help us out, help us to reach much bigger audiences than we could have ever, ever imagined. And guys, please do remember to follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It really does help us to grow the show, helps the algorithms to pick us up and recommend us to other people people that are just like you. And so, if you have not yet had a chance to follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And that is a completely free way to that you can help support me and help support the Business Development Podcast.

If you are listening to this show and you want to get real deep with business development, I would highly encourage you guys to sign up for my Business Development Mastery Program. Whether you are in business development, whether you're a founder, an owner, a CEO, anybody responsible for the growth of your business, and you want to make sure that you have a process in place to make sure that you are creating a great, solid opportunities for your business that you are achieving your growth goals as we head into 2025.

The Business Development Mastery Program is for you. And I want to hear from you. I want to chat with you. I want to learn your challenges. I want to learn what you're currently doing and I want to learn about your goals and I want to help you achieve them. So please do. feel free to reach out where you can book a free discovery call for my business development mastery program.

You can do that from the capital business development website under coaching, or you can go directly to my LinkedIn profile. And if you look under my name, you're going to see a little button that says, amplify your impact, hop on there and book a discovery call. And let's chat about your business and growth goals.

I can't wait to hear from you. All right, guys. Let's just get into it. Community Questions, September 2024. And my gosh, do we have some questions? September was a great time for for community questions, submissions. I absolutely love it, guys. I love how many we got. I love the engagement. And I'm very much looking forward to doing my best to answer these questions for you and to everybody who submitted.

Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate it immensely. Okay, our first question is from a listener named Aniket. And Aniket says, My first question is about handling communication. How should we handle communication when someone agrees to a meeting after being approached on LinkedIn? Or when we have had a positive meeting, but I didn't receive a follow up response.

What strategies can we use to regain traction without being intrusive or annoying? Great first question Aniket. You know, this is awesome. The reality is we are pretty consistently reaching out to people at LinkedIn. All the time. One of the things that I would say is that you want to transition the conversation as quickly as you can from LinkedIn to a direct communication via email or phone.

So if somebody has come on and said, Hey, absolutely. I can't wait to meet with you over LinkedIn. You got a couple of options. You can immediately send them a Calendly link to book a time slot to speak with you. This is a, this is a technique that I use a lot on LinkedIn when I'm talking with people and I just want to set up a meeting quick and I don't really want to go to the down and dirty of asking them, can you send me your email?

And then I have to go to my email and send it. An easy way to do this is by simply using a scheduling calendar like Calendly. And I would highly recommend that you try doing that Aniket especially if you're just trying to lock down a meeting fairly quickly. Set some times aside in your Calendly and just send them a link.

Say, I can't wait to meet with you. Here's my booking link. Please schedule a time. This way, when they schedule a time in the Calendly, you will also get their email address right there. So this might be an easy way for you to lock down that meeting in a hurry, Aniket if you want. Otherwise you can always old school it and just say, Hey, great.

Please send me the direct email that I send the invite to you. And let me know a couple of times that work for you. Now, if you do this, for instance. And you do not receive a follow up response. Couple things. Obviously we can take this into the active marketing process and just like anybody that you would have sent a message to and not got a response, we can track down where they are at by simply looking at their LinkedIn, figuring out what city they're in, what company they work for, and calling that mainline office and see if we can't get through to them simply on the phone and lock down that meeting that way, Aniket.

But you remember, LinkedIn is not really about It's not about selling. It's really not about trying to lock down the meeting over LinkedIn. If we can avoid that, we definitely want to. We want to use LinkedIn as like a warm contact stage where you can do your introduction, you can drop your brochure, and great.

If they want to schedule a meeting, absolutely, just do it. But remember, that's not the point of the LinkedIn warm introduction. It's simply to get in their minds, for them to learn a little bit about you, and to make a personal connection so that when you follow up via phone, via email, the proper way through an active marketing process, it makes it easier for you to lock down that meeting.

So remember, if they don't necessarily get back to you on LinkedIn, that's not the end of the world. We can always take that to the next step. There was a second part to that question where he said, and what if we have a positive meeting, but I don't receive a follow up response? What strategies can we use to regain traction without being intrusive or annoying?

Once per week, Ani that's the secret. Once per week. At that point, if you had a great meeting with somebody, you didn't hear anything back, reach out the next week, say, Hey, I had a great meeting with you last week and would really love to continue that conversation or, or figure out what the next steps are.

Remember guys, there's always five magic words we need to ask at the end of every single meeting. And. It kind of stops this challenge from happening. Okay. The whole regain traction thing. You don't have to regain traction if you never lose it. And so one of the secrets we can use at the end of every meeting is say, Hey, this was an absolutely amazing meeting.

I really loved meeting you. And now I just want to know what's next. The five words guys, magic. What are the next steps? I want you guys to memorize these so solid that you could say them in your sleep blindfolded. Okay, like, what are the next steps is the best last question that you should be asking in every single meeting.

And guys, this doesn't matter whether it's a client meeting. This is a client meeting, a team's meeting, a meeting with your wife, right? What is next? None of it matters. The whole meeting doesn't matter if it goes nowhere. It doesn't matter. You have to take it to the next level. And yes, this is a business development specialist job.

It is your job to figure out what is next and take things to the next level. Is the next thing a meeting? Is the next thing an RFP? Is the next thing an introduction to somebody else? Okay. We have to know what is next at the end of every single meeting. So Aniket next time. When you hit the end of a meeting, ask, what are the next steps?

This will definitely help you. And if you do end up in a scenario where you're like, I don't want to be intrusive. I don't want to be annoying, but I need to follow up with this person once per week. Just follow up once per week. And just say, Hey, you know, don't want to lose traction. I had a great meeting with you two weeks ago, and I just want to figure out what's next.

And the secret to not being annoying is just once per week, once per week flies under the human baseline. There's no issues. No, one's going to get annoyed from it once per week is safe. So just go to that. And you know, if you can't get them that way, maybe it's worth taking a little break. The reality is guys, we just can't win them all.

We do our best, but once per week, until you decide that you don't want to follow up that way is a good option. Aniket's second question is, since English is not my native language, I feel I struggle to establish as strong of a connection with my prospects as my colleagues who are Native English speakers.

What exercises or strategies can I use to be more engaging and confident in my communication? Now, Aniket, please take this with a grain of salt. I'm gonna do my best with this, but I am an English native speaker. Thank you. And that's the only language I speak. So, first off, amazing that you speak multiple languages.

To my listeners out there who are bilingual or trilingual or more, you guys are freaking amazing. Like, I have so many of you reach out and be like, Oh, you know, my English isn't so great. Who cares? You're, you speak multiple languages. That is freaking amazing. And even if you speak one language better than another, whatever, guys.

Pat yourselves on the back. It is not easy to learn a second language. Guys, I'm, I live in Canada. We are bilingual here. There's French and English, and guys, I don't speak French. Like, I only speak one language. And so for me, it is absolutely amazing. So to each and every one of you out there, first off, who are bilingual, who are willing to learn another language and obviously trying to work in another language. You are already freaking amazing. You are. Please don't feel bad if you feel like you can't communicate on the same level. The reality is that in your native language, you can communicate amazing and you can also communicate in another language. And so, Ani, while this is a really hard question for me to answer for you, what I want you to do is be proud of yourself.

I want you to pat yourself on the back. You are already freaking amazing. You are already killing it. And what I want you to do is just bring that confidence and confidence. to the conversation. So what if you screw up? So what if you say something that's not quite right? The confidence will shine through.

I want you to just believe in yourself. And if you believe in yourself and practice, your confidence is going to shine through. And that is what people are going to build connection with. Okay, so first off, Dude, you're amazing. Congratulations. You already are a rock star. You already are incredible for being able to speak more than one language.

So please, please don't be so hard on yourself. And you know, to my listeners out there who are, who maybe are from a different country, and English maybe is your second language. Guys, remember, you're rock stars. You're rock stars. Most of us, we only speak one language. And so the fact that you can speak two or maybe three is freaking incredible.

Please take that to heart the next time that you feel like, oh, you know, English, my English isn't as good as maybe my native language. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can communicate in multiple languages. That alone makes you superhuman. So, Please pat yourself on the back. I'm sorry, Ani I hope that this was, I hope that this was good for you.

I know it probably wasn't the answer you were, you were hoping for, but it is a really challenging one. But on the other hand, be confident. You are already amazing. Believe in yourself. You're already killing it and you're only going to get better. And I think that is what you need to hang on to. Thank you, Aniket, for the incredible questions and for contributing.

And you know, he's also been a very long time listener of the show and is a total rock star. And so I just wanted to give him a shout out and say thank you so much. We could not do this without you. My next question is from a listener named Patrick. And Patrick says, Hey, Kelly, I hope you're doing amazing.

My name is Patrick, and I have 20 years of sales experience in various industries. Huge compliments to you and your team. Thanks, Patrick. Even for an old sales guy like me, there's a lot of topics that you bring up on your podcast that are super exciting. I started listening to your podcast just four weeks ago, and I always listened to podcasts from the very beginning.

So at this time, I'm only at episode 22, but lucky me. There are still a lot of episodes to hear. Yes, there are, and I make two more a week. Patrick says, Why am I writing? Over the last 18 years, I have always worked for companies that were very established in their markets. The focus was not to bring new customers on board.

It was more of an account management job. Now I have started at a new company. And the job now is definitely to bring new customers on board. Moreover, it's a brand new industry for me, and that's exactly what I wanted. I wanted to do something totally different, and I'm so excited. We have a really good service that we can provide to our future customers because the company has been doing that for the last 20 years for huge market leaders in their categories worldwide.

However, they were not focused on spreading this information into the market. They were just happy with a couple of customers that they had, and that was it. Now they have a new vision and they want to acquire some new customers as well. Awesome. That sounds like quite the challenge, Patrick. So I have no network in this specific area and now I have to build it very fast.

Therefore, I am planning to go to a lot of networking parties, get togethers, trade fairs, and exhibitions. And now for my first question. What can I do to avoid standing alone at the corner of some of these trade fairs? My advice is to business development the trade fair. Now what I do, Patrick, when I go to a trade fair is I tend to bring my own brochures and business cards with me.

And no, I'm not just like going up necessarily and talking to strangers. What I'm doing is I walk the rows. So when you go to any trade fair, wherever it is, no matter how big or small it is, There tends to be multiple rows that you can ultimately walk up and down. And what I do is I walk up and down all the rows.

And what I typically do is I just look for potential customers. I look for companies that would meet the needs of the client that I'm working for at that time. And what I will do is I'll just go up and I'll introduce myself and I'll say, Hey, I'm Kelly with XYZ company. And I would love to grab a contact card for someone that I could reach out to with organization about XYZ services.

Here's my business card. And here's a brochure. Do you mind if you give me a card? And the cool thing about the trade shows is that they almost always have business cards for nearly everybody at the organization that you could want to connect with. So it's a really, really great opportunity for you to just grab a contact and get to it later.

Remember, we don't do business development at the trade show, Patrick. We just get contacts and we reach out about a week later. The people at the trade show, they're not in the mindset to business develop. I know it might feel that way, but But they're being approached by potentially a thousand plus people every single day.

Even if you were the most rock star company, getting them to remember you after speaking with, let's say, 900 other people. It's really, really tough. So what I want you to approach a trade show is meet as many people as you can, grab as many contacts as you can for later. The business development is always done later.

Don't feel overwhelmed like you have to sell in this moment. This isn't the moment. The trade show is not the moment. What it is, is a great opportunity to grab a bunch of contacts to follow up with later. Think about it that way and you will never stress about a trade show ever again. Patrick's next question is, What can I do to talk to strangers?

Okay, man, this one is tough, dude. Cause I totally get it. And no, my advice is not to go and pound a whole bunch of drinks at the, at the mini bar. It's not the solution. Okay. Talking to strangers is always challenging. And you know what, for an introvert like me, it's probably more challenging than ever.

And sometimes you just got to work up the courage to do it. Patrick. There's no real like easy way. There's no like, There's no mindset button that is going to be like, okay, this is what you do. And then you will feel great talking to strangers. But remember the best way to talk to a stranger is simply to introduce yourself and ask something about them.

Tell me about the company you work for. Tell me what you do. Come to every interaction with curiosity, Patrick, and you will always have something to say. Remember, once again, if you don't know what they do, and you're just approaching somebody, and you don't know who they are, what they do, where they're from, what's the best route of action?

It's to learn something about them, right? It's to learn something. You can only be a stranger until you learn something about somebody, and then you're not strangers anymore. What I would maybe do is put together two to three introduction questions that you feel comfortable with, that you feel like you could ask just about anybody.

And heck, if you got to practice them in the mirror until they're like rock solid, you do that. But come to every interaction from a place of curiosity. And I think you will find that meeting people is easier than you think. You don't have to know anything about them, you just have to be curious, ask questions, and listen.

And before you know it, talking to strangers will be easier and easier and easier. His next question is, How can I find out which person could be interesting in terms of business for me? This part is really tough, dude. I have no good advice for you on this particular subject unless maybe you knew who they were ahead of coming into the trade show, like you know, the keynote maybe, because you have a book and it says who the keynote speakers are so you're able to know a little bit of something about them before you approach them and maybe what they look like.

But, it's it's really hard. That's kind of the downside to like heading to a trade show to meet people or heading to a networking event to meet people because unless you talk to everybody You're really not going to know who is a good person to talk to and who isn't. And so in my mind, I'm not a gigantic fan of networking at events like this, guys.

You know, I think I've been honest about it before and the reason being is that it's simply not targeted enough. You're just shooting at the wall and hoping something sticks. It's much easier to connect with people on LinkedIn when you know that they're an ideal target. You know their position, buys your products and services.

It makes way more sense to make direct connections in a more targeted way than it does to just, you know, throw mud at a wall and hope something sticks, right? Which is kind of what happens at networking events. So unless you know that a person you want to meet is at a networking event, I would just ask yourself, like, What is the takeaway?

You know, what is the opportunity? Because if the answer is, I don't know what the opportunity is, you may have to ask yourself whether or not that networking event is the right use case for your time. So think about it from that standpoint. If you are unsure what you're going to get out of it, it's probably not the best use case out of your time.

So networking is one of those things where, you know, I mean, it's hit or miss. You never know what you're going to get. The trade fair is a little bit different because you know what companies are going to be exhibiting. So it makes a little more sense and you can definitely get the contact information.

Think about it from a standpoint of you definitely want to have some information regarding why you're going to go to this thing to meet people, right? Is is a company you want to work for there? Is there a keynote speaker who you want to be introduced to going to be there? Think about it from that standpoint, and if you can justify it that way, it makes sense.

But if you're just throwing mud at a wall and thinking, well, maybe someone will be here that's good. It's probably going to be a waste of your time and money. So. That's my that's my kind of two cents on how to find the right people at a networking event. All right. Thank you, Patrick. That was incredible.

They were great questions. And dude, I appreciate you listening, and I hope you continue to enjoy the show for the next, you know, 100 plus episodes. Our next question is from a listener named Lauren, and she said, Kelly, I'm working on my LinkedIn presence. I just listened to episode 153, and I've been thinking about personal branding a lot.

My question is, is my personal brand the way I promote the company I work for? I don't post any of my personal thoughts except my posts promoting my company. I'm assuming that my personal brand is the way that I present myself on LinkedIn or other socials. The things I post, how I post it, et cetera. I'd love to learn more about personal branding and if I've got the right idea about it.

Thank you, Lauren. Yes. And you know what? Personal branding is the key topic guys of 2024. It's so funny when I launched the business development podcast, the very first year, 2023. Everybody wanted to talk about AI and 2024 hit and everybody wanted to talk about the power of personal branding and how it's becoming super, super critical.

And yes, Lauren, 100%. And I want to, I want to chat about that because for the longest time I was handling branding the same way I was only posting corporate stuff. I was only posting about my business and like the clients I work for and things like that. And you're right. It's about you. The power of personal branding is.

that you bring your personal brand wherever you go. And the funny thing is you actually have, you've had a personal brand the whole time. What you're talking about is a public personal brand. And yes, it is about sharing yourself. It is about becoming more human. It's about sharing. The reality of what it's like to be Lauren, of what it's like to work at the organization you're at.

The things you care about, the things you value the things that matter. It's building you. It's becoming real to the eyes of other people. It's being somebody that you can relate to. It's really hard to relate to a business, right? Like. We struggle to relate with corporate posts, and that's why corporate posts get so little engagement.

If you've been on LinkedIn or other socials for any length of time, you notice that like most corporate posts, unless they're like a gigantic corporation, they don't get a lot of engagement. But every time that you post something personal, a challenge you've been through, something you overcome, something real, that can build real emotion, They get so much engagement and why is that because we connect with other people.

We want real person to person relationships and Lauren, that is what building a personal brand is about. It's about being relatable. It's about sharing value, providing value to a community, right? You provide value every time you share something vulnerable about yourself that someone else can say, yeah, me too.

That happened to me too. Or every time that. You know, you share a valuable piece of information that someone can then utilize in their own lives or their own business. That is a real value, and the more that we provide real value, the more we build our personal brand. It's about being you, being human, being vulnerable, being real.

Providing value. Do that, and you will inevitably build your personal brand. Thank you, Lauren. And Lauren has been a long time listener of the show as well, and we appreciate her immensely. My next question is from a listener named Carmen, and Carmen is a business owner, and she said, Kelly, I've been approached by some incredible people who I believe would add a lot of value to my business.

How do I know if it's a good time to add to my team? I'm thinking of starting on a more casual or part time basis to ensure there's enough work for them since my business is quite new. Do you have any thoughts or advice for me? And I actually replied to Carmen a little bit sooner than this. And the reason being is that I kind of felt like she needed the question answered earlier rather than later.

But my advice to Carmen was, before you consider hiring somebody to take on work, You should make sure that you are taking up the most capacity of what you are capable of, especially as a new business, as a small business, you don't want to outsource anything or have to hire an employee until you absolutely have to because it adds a whole nother layer of depth and challenge.

And financial strain than you have probably ever come across before. And so in my opinion, unless you are completely maxed out and you are incapable of taking on this extra work. And even then you have to ask yourself, does it make sense? Is there enough work here to sustain a long term relationship with another employee?

You need to ask yourself and clarify that because you don't want to necessarily hire somebody and have to let them go in a couple months either. So you want to look at what are all of the available options. What makes sense and does it make sense for me not to take this on completely by myself? If the answer is no, I'm full up, I can't take on any more.

This is a great opportunity. It's potentially long term, 6, 8, 12 months or longer. Then yes, Carmen. Then, yes, if you know that you potentially have an opportunity that could be long term for you, you are at full capacity you don't want to take on any more work yourself or you are unable to, and you know you have a long term potential opportunity on the table, then I would say, yes, maybe it is time to consider it.

Once again, only if that is your long term goal. You want to be a company with employees. Remember, you don't have to grow if you don't want to. You could say, you know what, sorry, I'm at capacity, but I can take this on in six months. And you could potentially reach back out to that client then and keep yourself going.

So you got to just decide, you know, it's really up to you. It's your risk, but I always lean towards be risk averse, especially as a new business. Be careful, tread lightly, make good choices and try to protect yourself. Because business, especially when you're, when you're a newer business, is challenging.

Money's tight. You got to pay yourself. You got to keep the lights on. You got to do all sorts of stuff. And adding any more strenuous charges like employees to your business, if it's not the right time, can hurt or kill your organization. It really can. And I hate to say that because I know it's kind of scary.

But there is a right time to hire employees. And that right time is when you can mitigate as much risk as possible for hiring that employee. Because employees immediately are pretty much the most expensive thing your business has. Immediately, they are your highest expense almost always. And so you have to look at it that way.

If employees are your highest expense, you have to be prepared for that. Whether that's money in the bank, whether that's a long term signed contract that you don't have any worries about. Whether that's a great negotiated contract with an employee, which is also another option for you, Carmen, is that you could negotiate a contract for that employee based on the project that you're taking on.

And maybe you will only employ them for six months until the end of the contract, and you can renew it then if there's opportunity. Find ways to protect yourself. As a small business owner, protecting yourself, protecting your business needs to be the number one priority. You have to look after your revenue.

And so Carmen, I hope that that helps you. I know I'm not trying to scare you with this. What I'm trying to do is protect you. What I'm trying to do is make sure that you grow in a way that is going to be sustainable for you and your organization. And so. Knowing when it's a good time to add on to your team is when you can mitigate the risk as much as humanly possible.

If you can look at the situation and say, you know what, I don't think that there's any risk to my company here. I think we've crossed our T's, dotted our I's. I think we've got a solid opportunity here. It's set, it's signed, it's sealed. I know where that money's coming from. I know I have the right person for this position.

Then, absolutely, absolutely, if you're ready for that, you go for it and you see what happens. But then, I've also always been told to hire slow and fire fast. And so, make sure that that employee is meeting the needs as soon as humanly possible. And if they are not, get rid of them. There's always somebody out there who can help you grow the way you need to grow.

And if you don't get the right hire the first time, it's not the end of the world. Okay. Now, Carmen's second question is, it has always been a goal to bring my programs to other cities, possibly finding someone awesome in that city to deliver them. Is there a right way to test this out? Or should I take some time to really master my own community and city first?

My business is quite new. It's just one year old. Thank you, Carmen. Great question. And I actually get this question a lot. And my advice is always, you're the most competitive where you are. Start where you are. Lock down the city you're in. There's customers in your city. There's many, many customers in your city.

I actually know what Carmen does. So, There's plenty of customers, Carmen, for your business. You do not need to look outside of the city that you are in just yet. You absolutely can, but why would you do that when you could for now tap into this massive community that you already have around you of people that want to work with you?

I can absolutely guarantee you. That you have enough business in your current city to keep you busy probably for the next couple of years. And then as you grow, get more money under your belt and gain brand awareness, people from other cities are going to reach out to you to come and do work. And that might be a great opportunity at that time to expand.

But trust me on this, I would build as much as you can where you are first and expand from there. It's only going to make you more cost competitive. It's going to give you time to build up in your own community. And when the time is right, you will inevitably move to other cities. So, great question, Carmen, and I hope that answered it for you.

My next question comes from a listener named Paul. And Paul asked, Kelly, what exactly is business development? Which is a really, really tough question for a lot of people. And I actually answered this question in the very first episode of the business development podcast, which was literally titled, what is business development?

But guys, business development is the strategic process of identifying and pursuing opportunities that drive new business growth by building relationships, generating interest. And creating partnerships, it involves researching and targeting the right customers, reviewing marketing materials to ensure that they are effective and engaging and proactive outreach through cold calls and emails to generate leads, what I call active marketing.

While business development specialists focus on creating opportunities and introductions, they are not responsible for direct sales or account management. And guys, that is my opinion. Okay. Once again, this is Kelly Kennedy and Capital Business Development's opinion on what business development is. But my rule is when it hits account management stage or when it hits like repeat sales stage, that is no longer business development.

Business development has to be focused on new. opportunities for an organization. If you stop focusing on new opportunities, your funnels inevitably dry up. Instead, business development specialists act as the champions of the company, driving interest and connecting the business to potential clients and strategic partners to secure new business.

Guys, the keyword I want you to take away here, business development is about new business. new business, not repeat business, not account management. It's about being able to generate new partnerships, new relationships on behalf of a business. That is the real definition about what business development is.

According to me, Kelly Kennedy, there's plenty of definitions out there, but that is the one that I like to use. Thank you, Paul. Incredible question and challenging, of course. All right. Thanks. And our last question today comes from listener Kubra and Kubra says, Kelly, I'm 26 years old. What do I need to be a top voice on LinkedIn?

This is a really interesting one because guys, I didn't even know there was top voices on LinkedIn for the longest time until I got invited to collaborate on questions. And honestly, guys, I wasn't even completely sure what the process was to become a top voice on LinkedIn. And it's funny because I am a top voice in business development and I think client relations, which is fun.

But I was invited to collaborate on articles. And so that's the thing. It's like, once you're in a niche, like once LinkedIn picks up that you are a specialist in, in something, in my case, it was really in business development. That's where the invite came through. And it said, Hey. You've been recognized as a leader in this space.

Would you collaborate with us on some articles? And the reward guys for collaborating on the articles is that you get a LinkedIn top voice badge. And guys, it's only good for like 60 days. So you have to continue to participate. That's kind of how it works. But I did a little bit of digging here on LinkedIn to understand more because I didn't really understand how it works.

And what I learned was this. There are two types of top voices. The golden badges denote people who are specialized in a specific industry or topic. It showcases them as thought leaders. And the second type, and guys, I've only even seen these a couple times, are blue badges, which only say top voice.

Somebody who has a top voice badge, by the way, guys, is a thought leader in HR. Named Liz Ryan. She has an actual top voice badge and the blue badges are selected only once per year by LinkedIn moderators and are invitation only. They are extremely hard to get and they boost the profiles of the members who get them by very serious margins in profile views and to get that you need to provide value.

Be timely, invite conversation, be relatable, and get to the point. And guys, I got this actually from LinkedIn itself. So this particular one was from linkedin. com forward slash pulse forward slash how to become a LinkedIn top voice. Okay, I I don't know all the algorithms and rules behind LinkedIn and how it all works.

But I do understand there are two badges. There's a golden badge for thought leaders. I have one of those. And there are blue badges for like amazing rockstar people and only a handful of people. I think they only give out like a hundred of them a year. So only like a handful of LinkedIn's top amazing people get those badges.

And it does sound like they are handpicked by LinkedIn moderators. So yeah, cool. Good question. What I would say is that the reason that I got mine is because I post very regularly about business development topics, right? So it kind of makes sense. It's like, If you want to gain an invitation and you will get one if you if you're talking about a certain subject over and over and over again, LinkedIn picks up on this and one day you're going to look in your inbox and someone's going to say you've been invited to collaborate on an article and collaborate to enough articles and we are going to give you a top voices badge.

Okay, so I hope Kubra that that answers your question. I know it's clear as mud. I am not a LinkedIn expert. I'm not a LinkedIn. I'm just a user like the rest of us. So, but I do hope that that answered your question enough. I was invited to collaborate on articles and I was given a top voice badge because I did, and they only ask you because you were already kind of singled out as a bit of a thought leader.

with a specific niche topic. So talk about a niche topic and one day you're going to find in your LinkedIn messages an invitation to collaborate. And when you do, work with them on a couple articles and you too will have a shiny golden LinkedIn badge. Guys, that takes us to the end of September 2024's Community Questions.

Like I said, it's always an honor. I absolutely love to Love, love this portion of the show. And it really is about you. This one is about you. And so if you want to participate in our October community questions, please do submit any questions you have to podcast@capitalbd.ca and I will see you in October.

Shout outs this week. Jayson Chakkalakal, Mike Mack, Scott Trowbridge, Colin Harms, Jamie Moffat, Adam Kimmel, Lauren Graff, Gary. N, Susan Poseika, Shawn Neels, Rodney Lover, Kapil Kalra, Rita Samson, Zak Rayani, Jan Correia, Sheeba Grover, and Ramesh Rami. Until next time, this has been the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.