Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 226: BEST OF 2023 | Cara Steinmann | The Easiest Way to Leverage LinkedIn to Connect with Your Best Referrers Yet

Transcript

226: BEST OF 2023 | Cara Steinmann | The Easiest Way to Leverage LinkedIn to Connect with Your Best Referrers Yet · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:00
  Intro: Happy holidays. We hope you have scheduled some time this month with your friends and family to rest, relax, and be together. Devina is taking a brief hiatus from recording new episodes of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. We hope you enjoy our best of 2023 lineup of the most popular episodes of 2023, and we'll be back in January with more episodes of the number one podcast for women in law in The US. Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast.
• 0:27
  What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, Her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now here's to Vina.
• 1:15
  Davina: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm happy to have my friend and colleague, Cara Steinmann here today to talk with you about the great work that she does. She is a, I call her a connector. That is really how I think of her is she is someone who is a master connector. She's so good at helping people connect with a very powerful network that they can use to help scale their business and enrich their lives.
• 1:44
  Kara tells me that she does this because she really believes in the collective power of women, and that is the key to dismantling systems of oppression in our society. I could not agree more. So you can see why we get along so well. Kara, welcome.
• 1:58
  Cara: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
• 2:00
  Davina: Good. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your business first, and then we're gonna get into kind of how you got into this work. So if you tell us just about your business, what you do, how you help people.
• 2:11
  Cara: Sure. So I work in business development, and I work primarily with women service entrepreneurs because I think that we are some of the people who need each other more than maybe others, my product based businesses. And we have an opportunity to refer one another more often. So it just makes sense that we all would work together. And so what I do is I help women figure out how to use LinkedIn in a way that feels good and authentic and how to think about building strategic networks so that they're not just making random connections and wasting a lot of time.
• 2:40
  It's kind of about working smarter and not harder so we can have more time with our family and still build a business that, you know, floats us and feels really good and does a lot of good.
• 2:50
  Davina: So let me ask you this. Why LinkedIn? What makes LinkedIn different and maybe better than some of the other social platforms for women in business?
• 2:59
  Cara: Now I used to spend a lot of time on Instagram and on Facebook and groups, and there's a lot of noise that has nothing to do with business. So usually, you're not thinking about business necessarily when you're on Instagram or Facebook groups. But when you're on LinkedIn, that's a business platform. And that's also one of its downsides because there's a lot of kind of stuffy masculine energy on LinkedIn if you don't know how to kinda manipulate that container to make it work for you. So LinkedIn, they're already thinking about business, and it's really easy to connect with someone and say, hey.
• 3:32
  How's it going? We should chat. I think we have a lot in common. Whereas, like, if you go into someone's DMs on Facebook, they might not even see it because it might be in their requested folder. And then they're also like, I don't know you.
• 3:43
  Like, this is my uncle, my aunt. You're somebody random. Don't know.
• 3:46
  Davina: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you came to developing your business.
• 3:53
  Cara: I've always been obsessed with psychology and people and why they do like what they do. Like, why are we the way we are? And so I fell into marketing and writing because I also loved writing. And that led into content strategy. And eventually, once you do that long enough, you kinda learn SEO and you learn Facebook ads.
• 4:11
  You learn all the things. And so probably few years ago, I landed in a space where I was working with a lot of clients I didn't really jive with. And I was doing a lot of things that I wasn't really particularly good at but had learned how to do along the way. And I was miserable. I was just miserable.
• 4:24
  And I was like, I don't even like marketing. I hate marketing. What am I doing here? But it turned out, like, once I really looked at what had been going on, I had never even had a website that whole time that I was working and always getting referrals for clients. And then when I would go in house, it was always like a referral for a job type of situation.
• 4:40
  So I had never actually done marketing for myself. And when I started trying to do marketing, when things got really complicated and busy online during COVID, I started doing my own marketing, and I just hated it. I was like, I don't wanna post on social. This is lame. I actually tried to post on Instagram one day, and my son saw it, and he was like, oh, mom, that is so cringey.
• 5:01
  I was like, I know. It's terrible. I don't like it. I don't wanna do it. And then, like, around the same time, I started kinda looking at, like, well, what am I good at?
• 5:10
  And I started mining my Facebook group comments. And what I found was that most of the stuff that I was responding to happened to be women saying, I hate social. I don't wanna do this. It sucks. Do I really have to do this?
• 5:22
  And I was responding saying, no. Build relationships instead. Cause that's what I had been doing the whole time, not realizing that that's really where my strengths lie. So I was able to take and help women understand how to do this in a way that feels good, that's authentic instead of doing what everyone says you should do. You should post three times a day.
• 5:39
  You should do this. You should do this.
• 5:41
  Davina: No. Yeah. But it gets very overwhelming the amount of content that is required to sort of keep up. And especially if you're on one channel and then somebody's approaching you and saying, here, you get this channel. You need to be on that channel.
• 5:55
  And And the next thing you know, you're creating all this content and you can hire all the help you want. But it's still the expectation that you are going to show up in those places. That can be very overwhelming for people, especially people who don't want to be on camera. Don't wanna hear their voices all the time.
• 6:12
  Cara: I don't. I don't like being on camera. There are a lot of shoulds. Even on LinkedIn, you'll hear, you should do video. You should do video.
• 6:18
  And I believe that that works for certain people, but not everybody. You like you don't have to do it one way. And so what I was seeing a lot of was women, mostly women because those were the groups that I was in. And they were saying, do I really have to get on TikTok now? Do I really have to do all this stuff?
• 6:33
  I just figured out reels. Like, it's overwhelming. Like you said, something's always coming at you. And at a certain point, you have to kinda question that and say, well, is this just, you know, another business trying to get me to spend money or time on their platform? Is this really what I need to do for my business?
• 6:47
  And women, we tend to congregate and come together and are more willing to help one another as long as we don't see each other as competition. So it makes sense that we would leverage that kind of tendency and work together anyway. And and it works. I've seen it work over the course of fifteen years. I've seen just one of my girlfriends told me recently that 80% of her revenue in the past ten years has come from introductions I've made to her.
• 7:10
  Referrals, direct referrals, or introductions I've made. And that's incredible. That's significant. But it's because she knows she does a really good job. I know what she does, and I know she does a really good job.
• 7:20
  When the question comes up, it's like, we'll talk to Melissa.
• 7:22
  Davina: So I think this is very interesting. I want people to understand kind of in your company what you do because it is unique in that we're not talking about somebody who's a LinkedIn consultant. Even though you do help people with that, you have a strategy that you teach. The bigger mission is helping women build a network, connect with other women who are like minded, are on similar missions and come together and collaborate and help each other in growing their business. So LinkedIn is a tool that you use to help do this.
• 7:55
  If LinkedIn didn't exist, you would have some other tool that you would use to help women do this. But LinkedIn is just a wonderful tool that you're able to use to help women.
• 8:04
  Cara: That's a good point. LinkedIn is just a container. And I think when we think about using LinkedIn for networking, we think about having to spend a bunch of time on LinkedIn. But the truth is I don't actually even start on LinkedIn when I find people I wanna connect with. I found you on Apple Podcasts when I was searching, searching for something I care about.
• 8:21
  And so then I reached out to you on LinkedIn. Actually, no. I had to go around the other way and have somebody introduce. You're what I would call a center of influence. So there are, like, three types of people that I would connect with on LinkedIn.
• 8:30
  We have, like, shoulder niche peers who I would consider other attorneys who have maybe a different specialty or a different type of client. And then you have like complimentary service providers like you mentioned earlier when we were chatting the if you're a family law attorney, maybe therapists or family counselors might be good referral partners for you. So that would be like a complimentary service provider. And you're what I would consider a center of influence because you have a podcast and a big audience of people who, like, potentially can build your visibility for you if you were to connect. So I had to get an introduction to you from somebody else that we mutually knew.
• 9:06
  But if you were a center of influence or if you were a complimentary service provider or a shoulder niche peer, I would have potentially just reached out on LinkedIn, but I would have taken it further. Like, when I build relationships, eventually, I have a container for women service entrepreneurs called the Ravel Collective. It's a community I built on Circle because there's a lot of other noise on LinkedIn, and I don't want it in the way all the time. So the more niche, the more, like, personal you can get. Eventually, maybe you're on a text thread with a few women that you really enjoy.
• 9:33
  But to your point, you have to enjoy them. It's not a numbers game. Maybe three or four really excellent women you can refer and can refer you become friends. It's more like my framework is really like it's a friendship flywheel. It's not a marketing flywheel.
• 9:48
  Like, we're building friendships, and there's no reason we can't have friends who are also really excellent referral partners.
• 9:54
  Davina: I was introduced to you. It was something that as we were talking, I really started thinking about because my life at this point has changed a lot. As we get older, it's harder to make new friends. While I have a lot of clients who I really love, there is a professional relationship there that doesn't go into friendship in any way because it can get confusing while you're in the professional relationship with somebody to say, Oh, you're also my friend. I'm going to discuss my personal problems with or whatever you might do with a friend.
• 10:27
  And so one of the things I was thinking over time is that my best friend just moved away to another state and I've really missed her because she's one of the few people that I saw in person. When you have an online business, it can be very lonely, even though you're getting a lot of interaction with people. It's not the same thing as in person. This year, one of my goals is to kind of grow my circle of friends. I think people that you work with as network partners can become friends because you're not looking at necessarily I'm providing them a service and now they're a client and that requires a certain type of relationship.
• 11:01
  They may be somebody that you are connecting with because you share interest and then you're referring to each other. There's reciprocity built into it and you're both growing your businesses, But there's a place where you can have wonderful friendships, I think.
• 11:15
  Cara: Absolutely. So relationship marketing, this is kind of confusing when you start to think about it. That's why I didn't realize that what I was doing was relationship marketing this whole time. Because when you Google relationship marketing, you get a lot of information about clients sending repeat business to you or, like, using your services again repeatedly or sending referrals to you. And it's about the clients.
• 11:35
  And that's not somebody you would really consider, like you said, building a friendship with because there's a professional relationship there, especially, like, when you're in the act of helping them. Mhmm. But it's also building new relationships. It doesn't have to be clients sending you business. It can be referral partners sending you business or friends who happen to have an opportunity to send you business.
• 11:54
  It's about leveraging when you're deciding who to reach out to and who to talk to, deciding what would be the most bang for my buck here and a person that I wanna hang out with and talk to. Because we work with people we like. And if you can find people who share your core values, it's really, really about the core values. There's some correlation with core values and temperament. So if you find people who share your core values, you're gonna have similar temperaments and personalities, and it's just gonna be easy and you're gonna want to hang out and talk to that person and get to know them.
• 12:22
  And then you're more top of mind all the time. And that's where a lot of the benefit comes from is you have to see someone over and over again. There's a mere exposure effect that happens. So you see someone one time and you're like, I don't know about that person. But just seeing them over and over breeds preference.
• 12:38
  So eventually, you're like, that person is familiar. That person is safe. I really like that person. And then they want to send you referrals. You're invested in one another's success.
• 12:48
  Davina: You know what I like about this kind of process that we're talking about and what you're doing in your business is there's a real intentionality to it. Some people may look at it and go, well, that's very calculating way to make friends. I'm like, well, this is friends with benefits, but a different kind of benefit. It is an intentional process because I think one of the things that happens in terms of the people we surround ourselves with is that they're siloed. So you have family, people that you grew up with that you consider friends, and they may not grow at the same rate you do and they don't.
• 13:20
  They won't grow at the same rate you do. And so your friendship over time changes. Also their ability to understand what you do to refer you business is something that you wouldn't put on that kind of a friendship. It's more of a family type friendship. Then you have your colleagues that you met, Maybe people you went to law school with, maybe people through your bar association that you know, and that's another type of network that you may have.
• 13:45
  A lot of these evolve based on who's in the room. And what you've done is created this sort of intentional space of shared core values. That is a way of saying I'm going to intentionally go and find people who are where I'm headed. Those are the people that I want to evolve to be to grow into. And the conversation is different when you're in a room full of people who are successful, are healed, who are grown, who are doing great things and spreading messages with other people, as opposed to maybe some people who've just always been in our life because of circumstance.
• 14:22
  Right?
• 14:23
  Cara: Yeah. So I think networking in this way helps you overcome one of the biggest problems in marketing today, which is noise. Consumers don't trust us anymore. They may come to our website. And if we don't have a purpose clear on our website, if we don't stand on one side of the fence or the other, like you, for example, your website, it's very clear that you're about empowering women.
• 14:41
  You know, when I see that, I'm like, yes. This is my people. We have the same mission. We are allies. And that's how I think about it.
• 14:47
  It's not that we're building relationships to benefit us. I'm reaching out to people on LinkedIn because I can see that they wanna see the same change in the world that I wanna see, and that makes us allies. We're on the same team. We wanna see the same change. So it's bigger than our businesses.
• 15:02
  It's about creating change. And if we don't have an obvious purpose in our business, if we're not actively trying to make some change, I would suggest that we get that purpose, that we find it in our sight of ourselves because we can't stand out today in the kind of crowded market that we have with consumer attention span as short and as untrusting as it is without some kind of purpose that people can align with. It's a byproduct of this coming together for a common purpose. And one of the things, like you said, women, it's lonely. It's really lonely.
• 15:30
  My husband doesn't really understand what I do. I don't have a lot of entrepreneurial friends. I have a couple of attorney friends that I love from high school. Like, we're best buddies, but they're not entrepreneurs. They work for the state, and they don't have a clue what I do.
• 15:41
  And there's a lot that comes along with running your own business and, you know, impostor syndrome. And it's just lonely sometimes. And when you have a tribe of women around you, you lift each other up. When you get referrals constantly, it's really hard to live in impostor syndrome because someone's constantly reaffirming that you do a good job at what you do. So it's for our mental health as much as it is for our business.
• 16:02
  Davina: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's what I like about it. I think it goes deeper than when you talk about marketing. I do think, like you said, if you want to stand out, you have to examine on a deeper level why you do what you do. So because if we're just in something for money or wealth or whatever, I don't think you connect as deeply with people as you do when you say I'm on a mission for something.
• 16:23
  And that mission is everybody has one, whether you realize it or not. There's a purpose for you. There's a purpose that is unique to you and thoughts that you have about the world and a point of view. And so I think showing that in your marketing messaging is so important. But also, I think what you're talking about is really expansion of yourself and what you're capable of.
• 16:44
  Because when you are around other people who are on that journey of expansion and growing and they're doing something that is powerful and meaningful, and maybe they're trying to figure it out just like you're trying to figure it out. That complementary energy makes for a much bigger force. And it's going to affect every part of your life, not just your business, but you as your personal growth as well. So I think a lot of reason that people don't like marketing is they think of these old fashioned in person networking events where that you go and you make small talk. And they say, I don't like to make small talk.
• 17:18
  I wanna get to know people deeply. And that's what this kind of program is about. Right?
• 17:25
  Cara: Yeah. And it's funny because I hate networking in person. I actually have terrible anxiety. This happened a few weeks ago. I was supposed to go to this networking event in Sacramento near where I live.
• 17:35
  The whole day, I was just in a funk, and I ended up just not going. And I think I was just in a funk all day because I knew I had to go to the stupid networking event and get dressed up. And it takes time, a lot of time, and there's all these people around. And I personally would rather have an intimate conversation with one or two people about things that really matter. And what I didn't realize when COVID happened was that suddenly I was in a position to do networking the way I wanted to do it.
• 17:57
  And it was fun, and it was easy because when you reach out to someone on LinkedIn or get in the comments, really, you're only having a conversation with one or two people at a time. It's not a big event. And you're at home or maybe you're in the grocery store line on your phone and you're sort of multitasking and using your time a little more wisely and it's easier and you build relationships more quickly, it's faster.
• 18:17
  Davina: So let's talk about LinkedIn as a tool because I was just listening to another podcast yesterday and they were discussing LinkedIn. And one of the big pitfalls of LinkedIn that I think people kind of hone in on is that it's spammy. I get a lot of emails in my inbox on LinkedIn. I rarely check that. I have someone who helps me with that, but I get a lot of just people coming in for the cell.
• 18:43
  They don't even know me, they connect with me and I get a message about what they do and they're coming in for the cell. I don't even read them. I don't have the time. I'm not looking for the service. I'm not interested.
• 18:53
  You can tell that they don't know, especially me. I'm an attorney who is not currently practicing full time and I'm a coach. So I get a lot of people who are approaching me as an attorney to sell me services for a law firm or attorneys. So you could tell they haven't even gotten looked at my profile.
• 19:09
  Cara: If
• 19:10
  Davina: you want to play in the LinkedIn world and use it to build connections and relationships, how do you do that in a way that is and you don't need to give away your whole secret formula. I just want kind of a sort of a philosophy or an approach on this. How do you do that in a way that doesn't feel like you're spamming people?
• 19:27
  Cara: Okay. So this is a really great conversation to have because I don't get a lot of those spammy messages. Occasionally, I will. But I used to use LinkedIn a lot when I was doing content marketing and inbound. But in that space, the idea is you just accept every request you get.
• 19:43
  Maybe you just connect randomly. I mean, they put a limit of 200 a day, I think, or something like that on how many people you can ask to connect because they know people are out there just trying to do a numbers game. They want you to have us like, it feels like you should have for that. I know. I've tried it just to see if it's horrible.
• 19:59
  It's not a numbers game. It has to be really personal. If I get in a connection request that doesn't have a note attached to it even, nine times out of 10, I won't even accept it. I don't care if it looks like you are connected to me. So, anyways, to answer your question, I think you have to make LinkedIn the container that you want it to be.
• 20:16
  First of all, stop worrying about what the algorithm wants you to do. A lot of popular advice will tell you to go in and unfollow people that you don't wanna see, but don't disconnect from them if you end up with, like, a lot of people. So you've been using LinkedIn for ten years and you've got thousands of connections. I had that and I went in. It didn't feel like a safe space to me.
• 20:34
  I had old bosses in there. I had, like, friends from college I don't talk to anymore that have no realm of, like, similarity in what we do and don't even have the same, like, mission and work and life. Right? I disconnected with them. I dumped, like, 600 connections.
• 20:49
  So I only had, like, 400 connections in there or something. And it really cleaned out what I saw when I went in there, I wasn't as overwhelmed. And what I did see, I wanted to see. And so it made it a more enjoyable place to be. When I do connect with people, it's people that I want to connect with.
• 21:05
  I feel no pressure whatsoever. If I don't understand what you want from me or why we would be connected, I don't do it. There's no reason you can't just say no. And that keeps it really pure and clean so that it's a container you want to spend time in. And then there's a lot of pressure to post and have a content schedule.
• 21:21
  I rarely post. I think it's maybe not as effective as being in the comments of other people's posts and having conversations in there. And you get just as many connection requests from really relevant potential referral partners and friends by having a conversation in someone else's post. And it's a give that builds reciprocity because when you comment on someone else's post, it opens the algorithm up for them. And they know that, and they appreciate it.
• 21:47
  Intro: If you're a fan of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, I invite you to join us in the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League as well. In the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League, we share with you our complete framework for scaling a law firm business to high 6 or 7 figures so you can fully fund the lifestyle of your dreams and still have ample time to enjoy it. No more working yourself into the ground for success. In this exclusive for women law firm owners only community, you'll enjoy coaching in an intimate group setting, all the training materials, tools, tips you need to grow your law firm without overwork or overwhelm, and a supportive league of other women lawyers on a similar journey. For more information and to join the league, go to go.wealthywomanlawyer.com/lawyerleague.
• 22:30
  The link is in the show notes. We hope to see you in the league.
• 22:36
  Davina: So there's so much in that, just little short few minutes that I want to unpack. That was great advice you told me when we first spoke was I said, you know, part of my reluctance to post on LinkedIn is I do have a lot of those old bosses, people that I used to work with that don't know me anymore. You know, lurkers, men that you know, think I'm cute, you know, that want to from the past, you know, that you're like, we would never be in touch. I had someone from high school who was following me everywhere and he signed up for my he's married. We saw each other at reunion.
• 23:10
  So this is one of these after the reunion, everybody follows each other kind of thing. And then I'm you start purging. And he got on my email list and I was sending out emails promoting my business. And I specifically said something that was polarizing about men and women. My women clients will often hear me use the term white men 50 club or now that I'm 50, the white men 60 club.
• 23:30
  When I talk about the old boys network and I use that in an email and he wrote this scathing email back to me and told me how I didn't know anything about what I was doing and he had been in sales for thirty years. I'm like, dude, we're the same age. Like we went to high school today. You're not impressed. But I went in and I blocked him everywhere because I'm like, I'm not going And to treat I didn't even like you then.
• 23:54
  Cara: But nobody asked you buddy.
• 23:56
  Davina: Exactly. So you gave that advice for LinkedIn. I thought that's great. I haven't done it yet cause I need time to just sit.
• 24:02
  Cara: It takes time.
• 24:04
  Davina: Unfortunately you got to dig way down into the archive. You got to scroll to get to the ones who were back there in the past, but it would make me feel so much safer posting there my commentary there and all of that because I know that I wouldn't be attracting trolls basically.
• 24:23
  Cara: Yeah. Exactly. As women too, especially we're always watching what we say and we should be you know, don't be polarizing. That's exactly what we have to do. And we have to release.
• 24:33
  Like, one of the things that we do is we get online and we him and about what we should say and whether someone's not gonna like it. Someone's always gonna not. There's always gonna be some Right. Jerk out there that doesn't like what we have to say, especially if it threatens his, you know, superiority in some way, which Right. Yeah.
• 24:48
  It's kind of what we have to do. I gotta figure out a better way other than smash the patriarchy because it's very, like, violent, and I don't wanna say that, but, like, that's what I wanna do.
• 24:56
  Davina: Dismantle. Dismantle these systems of oppression
• 24:59
  Cara: that keep us, you know, should it?
• 25:00
  Davina: Like, Jango, we can just keep pulling from the bottom and the side
• 25:03
  Cara: I to all saw a great TikTok not that long ago. It was somebody talking about, well, how do we dismantle this thing when it's so big and there's so much power at the top? And it was a pyramid of sugar cubes in a tub of, like Yeah. Just a tub, big tub, and someone poured hot water on the side of it. And it just dissolved from the bottom up because there was so much, like
• 25:23
  Davina: So much hot water
• 25:24
  Cara: at the bottom that it just took the whole thing down. And I like how that is. And that's like women. We don't have to be in any kind of real system or situation where we have a lot of power individually because coming together, we have a lot of power together.
• 25:39
  Davina: Mhmm. Do think that putting our voices out there individually matters. But I also think you don't have to subject yourself to randos. You know, I just saw this fabulous attorney who is so successful and so smart, and she had a video this morning on a current social issue. And there's always the guy or sometimes in the case of woman in the comments who just keeps arguing the polar opposite and insulting people for their mindset and things like that.
• 26:11
  You just see it and it's like so exhausting. I just firmly believe in block delete. I do too. I'm that kind of person. The reason
• 26:20
  Cara: There's nothing wrong with that. Block them. I'm not on this platform to play by anybody else's rules, and I don't wanna see that. So I've absolutely blocked anybody who is offensive.
• 26:30
  Davina: So I think that on LinkedIn, one of the things that may help people, I know when you said it to me, I was like, oh yeah, I had thought about it, but I hadn't really thought about it in the way that you presented it. Why should you deny yourself the opportunity to make connections with people who could refer hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business to you, who are there in business mode, just because some old flame is following you, stalking you on it, some old boss, and you're going to talk about stories about when you used to work there, Just get rid of them, get them out of That's your one thing that's really a great way to do that. And it also cuts down on that kind of spam sort of thing because I think lawyers get a lot of that because people think lawyers are rich and we're going to go after them and we're going to get their money and we're to sell them things. There's a lot of constant my phone rings all day long and I don't answer it because most of it is spam. It becomes a big battle just to constantly block and delete all that.
• 27:30
  So I do think that's where a lot of it comes from. My approach on LinkedIn is I'm connecting with other women law firm owners, other women lawyers, right? Because we have a lot in common and that's also who I work with. But one of the things I do is I provide value to them. I just say, I have a podcast.
• 27:50
  If you think you would like to listen to it, it's free content and it's a number one podcast for women in law in The US. And so there's a lot of value there. I think that's a great way just to kind of get people to get to know you a little bit and see what you're about and then starting conversations with them. And a lot of it depends on what you're looking for out of the relationship. In my case, I'm wanting to expose people to my world and see if they want to play in my world.
• 28:17
  And it's not a hard sell kind of thing, but I would imagine if I spent more time on LinkedIn, it would probably be very much like the way you make relationships in person with people.
• 28:29
  Cara: Yeah, absolutely. I think the easiest way to get connected on LinkedIn is to find something that you love. That's like find something you appreciate about someone who is aligned with you. I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. So for me, that's where I find a lot of interesting people.
• 28:46
  And I'll listen to a podcast about something that I care about. The guest will say something insightful or meaningful, and I'll stop what I'm doing. And I'll get on LinkedIn, and I'll try and find them. And then I'll message them. In the connection request, I'll say, I heard you on this podcast context.
• 29:00
  Right? I really loved what you had to say. I couldn't agree more about x y z. Some alignment proving, hey, I'm like you. We should connect.
• 29:08
  Just as simple as that. And nine times out of 10, they come back and they're like, oh my god. I appreciate that so much. Nobody ever says, I appreciate what you're doing. Your work is brilliant.
• 29:17
  Like, that is such a way to build reciprocity. If you wanted to connect with attorneys who might even be a good fit for your programs, you could do that. You could listen to them or find an article that they wrote or even reach I've reached out to people when their website copy resonates with me and said, I just found your website. I love what you have to say about x y z. I think it's brilliant.
• 29:37
  We should connect. And that's it. And then you're connected, and then the conversation just goes from there. And the idea is to take it off of LinkedIn as soon as possible and get on a Zoom call to see if you're aligned with one another. Twenty five minutes, fifteen, twenty minutes, just like a connection call.
• 29:50
  And you know pretty quickly if it's somebody you really wanna continue connecting with or if maybe you know somebody that would resonate with them better. And then you make that connection. So that builds reciprocity One
• 30:02
  Davina: of the things that you said is so powerful is taking the time to find out something about the person. I can't tell you how many times I'm approached, and this is really on LinkedIn more so than anywhere with people who will say, hey, I have this thing for you or I want to tell you about it. And they haven't even gone to look at my profile. I could tell by what they're saying to me. They haven't even taken the time to know what I do for a living.
• 30:27
  They're just making assumptions based on my picture, my title or whatever. And I think they really miss opportunities. But I will say that one of the things that I know a lot of people in my audience are probably thinking is they're thinking, Kara, that feels like a lot of work. Like I gotta go. I hear a podcast.
• 30:44
  I gotta go look somebody up. I gotta go write them a message. That feels like a lot of work. What would you say to that? I have some thoughts on it, of course.
• 30:52
  But what would you say to that?
• 30:53
  Cara: I would say that's one of the misconceptions that we have is that it's a numbers game that we have to do, you know, make 10 new connections every day or every week. And that's not true. I had two or three referral partners, like, for ten years and didn't even have a website because they were excellent referral partners. They were strategic. We really got along.
• 31:10
  We liked each other. One of them is still a referral partner. I've had to expand my network a little bit in a different direction because I pivoted my business. So eventually, you know, maybe we change or we grow our business shifts and we have to make a few more connections. But it's not about making a 100 connections and hoping 50 of them pan out or even 20 of them pan out.
• 31:28
  It's worth taking the time to make sure you really align with just a few people. And you don't need all that extra time to connect with all those extra people. It can be really agile. It's like, just start paying attention to what resonates with you in your business, in your realm, and who else feels that way, and then connect with them. And it's just a few people.
• 31:47
  We're going deep with the relationships, not wide. We want a handful of really great referral partners who will make strategic introductions when they know that we would really resonate with someone in their network. Making introductions is a great way to broaden your network in a really strategic, not time consuming way. Because once you get to know someone really well, you can meet somebody else and say, gosh, they'd really, really get along with this other person in my network. And then you haven't even had to do anything.
• 32:14
  They're just connecting you. Right. It takes no time at all.
• 32:17
  Davina: It's the ripple effect of pebble in a pond kind of thing. Oh, here's somebody. And you're meeting people who think to introduce you to other people as well. Right? I do think when you're choosing referral partners and you're building these relationships, you have to have some thought about the people that you're connecting to and whether or not they're the people who will introduce you, other people who will refer to you.
• 32:39
  I know a lot of people who never think about referring to me. It doesn't occur to them because they're in their own world. So you have to really connect with people who are like minded in that sort of givers gain philosophy that you learn from BNI. That idea that I'm going to connect you with people that I'm not just thinking about myself because when you do that, they're going to be either paying it forward or paying it back to you or introducing somebody else who will pay it back to you or something like it's not with the person that you're talking to. That's going to be the one that you're going go, Oh, they're going to hire me for this or that.
• 33:10
  It's gonna be exposed to their network and their network expose you to other people and so and so forth. Right?
• 33:15
  Cara: Yeah. That's I think another piece of this puzzle that people get wrong on LinkedIn is that they're looking for clients. People go out looking for leads on LinkedIn, and they want people to buy from them based on an interaction they had on LinkedIn. But what we need to look for on LinkedIn are those allies, like the people who are on the same path to the same kind of change in the world that we wanna see. And they're going to be exposed to their network and they're gonna know when to connect us with their network.
• 33:41
  And they're gonna like us enough to want to make that connection because we're both trying to make the same change in the world. So when you end up building a relationship based on core values and purpose, like a higher purpose, it makes it so much easier to want to connect people with your network and to, like because you're not thinking, oh, this is gonna take five minutes of my time. Do I have that kind of time? You're thinking, this is really important for a purpose that I care about as well. I'm going to make that connection because everybody wins when I make this connection.
• 34:09
  Davina: What would you say to people who say, well, the thing I'm afraid of is because you're talking about aligning with people in the same mission and core values and all of that, you might be talking about competitors. And I've had some experiences with competitors who are people who wanted to use my platform, use me, use what I've to get something that they wanted. And there isn't reciprocity in that. So how do
• 34:35
  Cara: you talk to people sort
• 34:36
  Davina: of identify that from the get go with people?
• 34:38
  Cara: I would say there's always going to be people like that out there. But, also, our core values are pretty heavy duty drivers of our behavior. And you can read someone's website and watch their content on LinkedIn and where or wherever they are, listen to a podcast that they're on or an article that they wrote. And our core values are written all over our lives. So you could pretty quickly just figure out what somebody cares about.
• 35:03
  And if they're aligned with you, then they're probably going to be somebody who's not just going to be using you. Not everyone's a winner. Right? Sometimes you'll connect with somebody who ends up being a little more of a taker. Adam Grant has a good book called give I think it's called Give and Take.
• 35:18
  And he talks about takers, matchers, and givers. And a lot of people I find are matchers. And you learn that about them, then you don't invest as much because you know that they're not going to invest in you. But when you find somebody who's a giver, they build reciprocity naturally with you. You get to see who's going to be a good connection, and you don't invest time in people who aren't.
• 35:38
  We need to tune into our intuition in that way. It's not always a math equation. Sometimes you have to just go with your gut and tune into what feels good, what feels right.
• 35:46
  Davina: Yeah. That's kind of what I wanted to talk about is just because you meet somebody and you have a coffee and, you know, you seem to have a nice chat. It doesn't always mean that they're going to be people that are in your life for the long term. It's just like friendships. You may meet people when you're in college and they're a great party buddy, but after college, never speak to them again.
• 36:06
  And then you may meet a lifelong friend. I mean, my lifelong friends have been people I've met random places. We just liked each other enough to keep making the effort. So it's the same kind of thing I think when you're talking about building a referral network for you.
• 36:19
  Cara: I've seen what happens a lot of times. If you get to the point where you're getting on a Zoom call together, you have enough rapport, there's enough alignment there that you're going to invest twenty minutes, thirty minutes, whatever it is. And it goes usually one of two ways. Either we hit it off and there's this like you click and you know that you're gonna just be more than referral partners. There's gonna be like more great conversations down the road.
• 36:39
  Or you find that your personalities don't really mesh as well as they could. And at that point, you say, okay. So what are your ideal clients like? What are mine like? We're gonna have different ideal clients because our personalities are really different.
• 36:52
  And in a service based industry, we need to work with clients that we get along with that are easy for us to work with. Lot A of that has to do with our personality and our temperament. So that's a really easy conversation to have. We're not gonna be best friends, but when I get clients in my office who seem like they might be difficult clients for me, I can think, okay, who else does what I do? There's no competition out there.
• 37:14
  Who else does what I do? Who this would be an ideal client for? Because I'm not gonna enjoy working with this client anyway. And then somebody else might have an easier time because their personalities match or they're they're more, you know, suited to work with one another or their process is different than mine, and it would be better for them. And then you've avoided a bad client and built reciprocity with that person.
• 37:35
  You just handed them a client. It was amazing. And they're like, oh my god. Next time I find somebody who's like, not a good fit for me, maybe they'll call me.
• 37:43
  Davina: In the legal field in terms of sort of, you know, there are a lot of attorneys who say, am more collaborative. Like, my goal is to help you solve your legal problem. I'm not going to like in the family law space and the divorce space, I'm not going to go this rate your ex. That's not me. If you're looking for somebody like that, I have a colleague who loves to, you know, is zealously represent their clients.
• 38:07
  If you're looking for that person, I have somebody who is like that. That is not me. And you're saving yourself and your client a whole lot of headache and stress. Totally. You're able to identify from the beginning and you're able to have those referral relationships.
• 38:21
  Litigious client colleague may say, I've got somebody that really wants to do the whole collaborative thing. I'm not into that. Let me send you this collaborative law is a separate sort of approach completely then. So that might be an example of what people are thinking, but I would like to talk about expanding kind of out. So you mentioned three different types of partners.
• 38:43
  And the one you mentioned was like with lawyers, if you're working with other, you're networking with other lawyers.
• 38:49
  Cara: Yeah. That would be like shoulder niche peers. Say you're a business law and then your potential referral partner is a family law. You guys are going to have different clients. You do sort of the same thing, though, but for different types of clients.
• 39:01
  That would be like a shoulder niche peer.
• 39:03
  Davina: I think a lot of times attorneys get caught up in only networking with attorneys. And because attorneys do make such good referral partners because they're dealing with people who are coming to them for legal problems. And so they may not be able to solve that legal problem, but they know that you solve that legal problem. And so that's why they work well together. But I want to help people expand their minds into thinking about those, what did you call shoulder to shoulder?
• 39:29
  What do you
• 39:30
  Cara: call The complementary service providers, I think, is what you're Yeah. Talking
• 39:34
  Davina: The complementary service providers and thinking about expanding their minds into who is it that serves the same audience that I do?
• 39:42
  Cara: Like business coaches. If you do business law or employment law or something like that, you might want to network with HR consultants or business coaches.
• 39:53
  Davina: You said business coaches because, you know, I am a business coach. And one of the things that is interesting to me is that I refer a lot. I refer because I am there to guide clients. And so they're looking for people to help them with specific problems. An example of that, that you mentioned is employment law attorneys.
• 40:14
  I'm not an employment law attorney. So when my clients are dealing with employment law issues, then I'm advising them on connecting with employment law attorneys. Oftentimes we don't think out of the box enough about who we can connect with, who can refer business to us. And people who would serve the same clients that we would is a great way. We mentioned family law and marriage counselors, or maybe a pair of somebody think about.
• 40:41
  I think estate planners often think of financial advisors, but there's a lot of other referral partners that they could consider as well. Anybody kind of in the senior industry might be something like
• 40:52
  Cara: CPAs, fractional CFOs, anyone in a financial position or I have to think about that one.
• 40:59
  Davina: Think even with state planning, if you're dealing with elderly, anything in the elder space, non attorneys. So there might be getting around nursing homes. I know some clients of mine have made great relationships with funeral home directors because often when somebody passes the family's at a loss as to what to do. And that's a great connection. So really thinking about who you wanna connect with.
• 41:22
  And so LinkedIn is a tool just to help us just like it used to be before LinkedIn existed. People had Rolodexes, and you just network and you put things in your Rolodex. LinkedIn has created a worldwide Rolodex for you. Yeah. Right at your fingertips, and you can use their search tools and stuff, you know, to help you with that.
• 41:39
  Cara: I think it's really important to think about your ideal client and what their life looks like and what's happening right before they might need your services so that you can figure out if you are doing the estate planning thing. Maybe your ideal client's family is searching for a place for them to live or, you know, Google some of the things that someone might be thinking about, like the problems they might be trying to solve during that time in their lives or their family's life, and then see what comes up. And the people who are addressing those same problems are going to be people you want to connect with because they're solving the same type of problem for your ideal client, but maybe in a different way, a different part of that problem.
• 42:22
  Davina: Yeah. Something closely aligned to it. Carol, this has been so fun. I've enjoyed talking with you as always. Tell us how we can connect with you.
• 42:30
  I'm sure you're on LinkedIn.
• 42:32
  Cara: Yes. I love I love LinkedIn and connecting with people on LinkedIn. So it's www.linkedin.com/in/carasteinmann is my LinkedIn. And then also my website. I have a form on my website.
• 42:47
  Davina: Alright. So we will have links to those in the show notes. So everybody who wants to connect with Kara, you can click on the link so you can check her out, see what she does, spy on her a little bit on LinkedIn. Connect.
• 42:57
  Cara: Say hi.
• 42:59
  Davina: And tell her that you heard about her from this show. That'll be your way to
• 43:02
  Cara: There's your contact.
• 43:02
  Davina: That's right. So thanks so much for being here. I've enjoyed it and I'll speak with you soon.
• 43:09
  Cara: Thank you.
• 43:13
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