Melissa Elizondo on Drinking from the AI Firehose: Modernizing a Century-Old Insurance Company

This podcast episode is an in-depth conversation with Melissa Elizondo, a marketing professional who transitioned from real estate to running a marketing agency, and then adapted her career in response to the rise of AI. The episode covers her fascinating journey, including:

• Her background in real estate and how a lawsuit led her to pivot into marketing consulting
• Building a successful marketing agency over 9 years, working primarily with local clients
• The challenges she faced when she lost all her retainer clients in October 2022
• A pivotal moment when a TikTok video about using ChatGPT and Canva went viral, leading to international clients
• Her current role helping modernize a 112-year-old insurance company through AI implementation
• Her expertise with AI tools like Gamma, Otter, Browse AI, and Notebook LM for improving business productivity
• Her vision to become a thought leader in AI implementation for the insurance industry
• Practical discussion about LinkedIn strategy and content creation

Throughout the conversation, Melissa emphasizes her focus on using AI to improve productivity and give people more time with family rather than just driving profits. She also shares how her faith guided major career decisions and her approach to embracing new technology.

The interview is part of a series focused on sharing behind-the-scenes stories of busy professionals, with particular attention to how they're adapting to their current life situations, etc.

You can find Melissa Elizondo at "therealmelissaelizondo" on all socials:

https://linkedin.com/in/therealmelissaelizondo
https://facebook.com/therealmelissaelizondo
https://www.tiktok.com/@thequeenofaitools
https://instagram.com/therealmelissaelizondo

This episode is sponsored by "Get Ghosted," a LinkedIn ghostwriting service of The Digital Writing Firm. https://thedigitalwritingfirm.com

Transcript

  As soon as the camera's on,  camp counselor.  Yeah. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. It's okay. The neighbors  can't hear me so I can be as loud as I want to be.  📍 Welcome everybody. It's nice to meet you. This is the behind the scenes stories of busy professionals.  My name is, let's see if you can catch this. 

But you can call me Rob.  I'm glad that my friend Melissa is here. She's an incredible person. I look up to her in a lot of different ways from the marketing side to also the investing side. And she just does. Great work and I'm grateful that she's here before we get started though. I do want to say  📍 One stat that I think is important for all the listeners, especially the professionals a PhD  study reports that 94 percent of buyers Choose to go with someone that has an active presence online,  which means Instagram, your website, and LinkedIn.

This episode is actually brought to you by Get Ghosted, which is a LinkedIn ghostwriting service. If you want to build trust in a record time and write zero words, check out Get Ghosted, our LinkedIn ghostwriting service. I think it can help you. Amen. All right.  interview. Melissa is multi talented, very smart. 

And boy, I'm excited to hear her stories on how she got started because like I said, she does a lot of different things. And the interesting thing is she does it really well, right? So what's going to  kick off the conversation is this ignition question and take it wherever you want to take it  in the last. 

12 months.  If,  if the last 12 months were turned into a Netflix special, what would be the title  and why?  

Actually I would call it AI  fire hose. I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hose right now. I mean, everything AI,  because, you know, everybody starts thinking that AI was invented when chat GPT came out, but it's actually been on the market for a really long time.

And I was using stuff back when it was 500 a month. Like Jarvis and stuff. And I, I am now it's moving so quick. I don't want to get left behind and I don't want my clients to get left behind. And so I digest so much information every day. I subscribe to five newsletters. And I skim and then I click on articles that I think are relevant to me or my clients.

And then I go try out AI tools. I've, I've actually tried out some that you've sent me and I am fire hose right now. I'm just like drinking from the hot fire hose. So you don't have to, you know, yeah, it's, it's a lot right now and it's changing so quickly. So really that's kind of where my last 12 months have been.

I like it. AI Firehose. Yeah, that's a t shirt. It, it could also be a band. So I like that. Yeah, my, 

The CEO of my company got me a shirt for Christmas from Dell and it said all is merry and bright, but the A and I were capital. So I got you a shirt. It was free, but you know, it's a thought. 

That's cool. I just love stories.

I'm from American Samoa, grew up on the island. Everything that was intriguing to me and including people. So I'm super curious about people's stories, how things happen, did they decide why and all that stuff. So you have three options  on a story that we can kind of unpack. So you have your origin story on where you're at with whatever you're doing, whichever one you want to highlight, or we can go into the obstacle story. 

What big challenge you might've overcame and what led to it being a challenge and what could have been avoided  for the future, right? So the obstacle story and then the Mr. Miyagi story. Mentors that have impacted you,  right? That taught you some things, life lessons that you're carrying through now. So take your pick, which one would you want me to drill?

And just kind of  

get into all three of them with just one story on an obstacle.  You know, I opened with AI and but I didn't tell you how I got there. Like, why am I doing AI? And it's because I had to shut down my marketing agency  because AI came on the scene. So where, you know, but what am I doing with it now?

You know, if you want to talk about that.  

Yeah. Let's go to the what made you decide to stop the marketing? And how did you even start the agency?  

Okay. Yeah. So we can back up. I was in a real estate for about 10 years as a broker. I did a lot of property management, had a lot of rental properties and a story for another day.

I got sued, which is actually One of those things that you're always afraid of happening and you just don't think it's going to happen to you, but it did happen to me. And part of my resolution with that was to get out of the business completely. So I sold my company off. I went into title for a little bit.

And then I started consulting agents wanting to become brokers. So there were a lot of people who came to me cause I was a real estate broker for so long and I was successful. And so they were like, Hey, Can you come in and help me get everything set up and whatnot? So I started doing that and oh, sorry  Something popped up on my screen.

So I started doing that and that led to me Helping them brand their companies helping hire people to build websites and do marketing and honestly I felt for a long time. It was a mystery and I was really I felt like people were pulling the wool over my eyes on how this, how complicated this was. And so I started digging in and trying to figure it out myself.

And that led to me having a passion for doing my own graphics, for doing my own marketing, building stuff. And so I, I just decided to learn. And you know where I learned on LinkedIn? So LinkedIn had a platform back then called lynda. com. It's now linked in learning. 

Yeah, 

and they had beginner classes on graphics and all kinds of marketing stuff.

So I, I, I started kind of dipping my toes in and about 10 days into that of the people I was contracted with for their brokerage decided to split ways and with no notice. And so I was like,  Okay what am I going to do now? And so, cause I really wasn't prepared to do marketing yet. And so I ended up applying for like 42 jobs.

I heard nothing from anybody. And then I ended up, talking to the guy I was helping who built all the websites for me. As I did these consultations, he was like, Hey, why don't you sell my websites? There's upcharge it a little for yourself. You do graphics. I was like, I'm 10 days into knowing graphics. 

And so I went out and started doing networking groups. So I went around town and I was like, Hey y'all, I know you know me from real estate, but I am now going to do marketing and graphics and websites. But what they told me was, Hey, we love the way you are on social media. Can you like do our social media?

So we, I picked up like 10 social media accounts in a week  and that kind of got me by and I started doing that. And then I hated social media because I do not want to manage that many accounts. And so I started hiring people to handle that while I worked on more websites, graphics, and just an overall.

Marketing kind of agency, but I really didn't have any employees. I had a couple of employees. I really had subcontractors, and so I would get a client and that client needs a website, a logo, some ghost writing like you were talking about. Whatever. I, and I had writers, I had videographers, photographers, all these people who needed work, but they weren't great at talking to the client, but I was, and so I'd, I'd come feed them.

I'd say, all right. What will you charge me for this? I have charged it a little more than that, charge it to the client and I paid everybody and I just stayed on top of them doing their work. So I did that for nine years and I would have monthly retainer clients and that's what paid the bills. And then I'd get some random things that people needed, like a website, you know, that's a one time charge generally. 

Well, chat GPT had not come out yet,  or did it come out? No, it had not come out yet. But the market started changing after COVID and people started cutting their budget. And it was a lot easier to let your marketing consultant go  fire an employee. And so I started losing my retainer clients. I think I had 12 at the time and I lost all of them in one month. 

From October 1st to the end of October. And they were all different reasons. So some of them were because of budget. Some of them were because of changes internally. They were going to hire somebody that internal that they can have 100 percent of the time. They were all different. And so,  cause I would obviously internalize that and be like, what did I do?

You know but I ended up sitting there. with no clients. I had about four months of expenses left in the bank income to still keep everybody on payroll through the end of the year. But we are pretty much like, Hey guys, you're probably going to need to go find some more stuff to do yourself. Because we're not going to be able to make it after the end of December.

Well, fast forward about two months and chat GPT comes out  and I am,  I had seen it, I had started playing with it and then I'm. I'm really like praying. This is when your prayer life gets really good. I'm like, Lord, do you want me to close the business? Is this what we're doing? And he tells me, I need you to share all your marketing advice, like just give it away on social media.

And I was like, you know, I get paid to. Do that. Right. And so it was like, yeah, I want you to give it away for free. And I was like,  okay. And so Christmas Eve that year, I decided to start posting on Tik TOK and I started posting videos. Just like, Hey, this is a week between Christmas and New Year's. You might as well start fixing your marketing now.

And here's what you want to do. And I started giving tips, right. Well, I don't know, six or seven videos in, I decided to show how you could do 30 social media posts with ChatGPT and Canva in three minutes. And that video went, quote unquote, viral. It was only like 800, 000 views. But for me, I went from having 200 followers to 10, 000 followers in four days.

And my, my LinkedIn, my calendar lead link my calendar started booking up with strangers. So in my profile I had, you know, book a consultation, a free consultation on zoom. So all of a sudden I'm just getting these appointments. I have no idea who these people are, but in my prayer time with the Lord, I was like, okay, Lord, what do you want me to do?

This is kind of weird. I've never talked to so many people and I don't know who they are. I don't know what their businesses are. Some of them I couldn't tell from the way I did my intake form. And he told me I need you to one, anybody I sent to you for marketing, I need you to point them back to me. 

That is your first job. Then you can serve them with your talent and your time. And so, I mean, I was nervous, but I was definitely going to be obedient to this. And so all of a sudden. I started taking these phone calls, our zooms, and I'm meeting people from all over the world. And so I, up to that point, I really only had a local following in my, in my backyard in New Braunfels, Texas.

And all of a sudden I'm meeting people from New York and Florida and California, Canada.  Africa like I just it was crazy and I would jump on all of them are Christians So that kind of worked out and I just kind of gave them a little boost of well I guess the Lord wants you to be successful So let's build your web and they were all for websites So I made like 40 grand in one month just from that one viral video and I was like, okay We can make it a little longer So four more months go by and I end up getting a call from the very first client who had fired me that October, which was an insurance agency.

So he ends up calling me, I was driving to Dallas and he was like, Hey, we're looking at hires, hiring somebody internally.  And I'm like, good, you need somebody, you know, do you need me to help you write the ad interview them? Cause I have done that before. And he said, well, I mean, you can, but we were hoping you would do it.

And I was like, well, that's ridiculous. You're going to have to pay me a lot of money for something. You could pay somebody less, you know, and he was like, yeah, but you know, I don't have, I wouldn't have to train you because you've worked with us for the last four years. So I wouldn't have to train you.

And  I was like, I don't know. I'll think about it. So.  I ended up I was out of town. So when I came back, I had already decided, No, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just gonna keep moving. This is hard right now, but I can make it through. And I end up having lunch with one of my mentors who normally  can you hear that vacuum in the background?

Somebody's vacuum outside the door. Okay, good. So normally what would happen is I would get to a point of certain success in my company, and then I kind of Yeah. get comfortable. 

And 

so one of my mentors, I have three, one of them would always kind of get on me. Like, you get so comfortable, like you're right about where you could take it to the next level and you decide to just like chill for a minute.

And so I had him in my head and so I thought he would be proud of me for doing the hard thing, taking it to the next level. So I ended up having lunch with him a week later and I was like, yeah, you know. This is the state of the marketing world right now and AI is on the scene and I'm not sure what's going to happen and blah, blah, blah.

I said this, and it's an insurance company, so super boring, right? And they, they want to hire me. And I was like, but you'll be proud of me. I said, no, I'm going to do the hard thing. And he goes, I really think you should take it.  What? That is not what I thought I'd hear from you. And he's like, I, he, I said, you've always gotten on me about getting comfortable and you know, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm just trying to take it to the next level. And he said, yeah, but that was when you were on the top of your game. You're actually on the bottom of your game now because you're starting over. You don't have any retainer clients. You don't really know where your next, you know, job's coming from. So just take it like take a break and just kind of insurance isn't going anywhere.

Like it's a pretty stable company. Take a break.  All right. So I called them up. They said, I said, ask them if they hired anybody they hadn't. And so I came in for an interview, which was really just a job offer at that point. And I just laid it out. I was like, you pay me this much. I get Friday's off for my grandkids and we could do it.

And they said, okay. And so I came to work for them and I took their marketing plan and I finished that in like seven months. And then they finally asked me what I would do. And I was like, I'd bring you into the next century and we would learn, let's do some technology. Let's get some AI stuff done. And luckily I think because my boss didn't want to lose me because I kept teasing him that I was gonna leave after a year, like I'll give you one year.

I don't know if I can do more than one year. I've been an entrepreneur for too long.  So I was like, AI excites me.  Technology excites me. And that's really, really what I want to do. I don't want to do insurance. And so he was like, I love technology.  So he was like, so he ends I was like, this is what I would do to market I would build I would start putting out video content.

I would start, you know, and I laid out what I would do if it was me. And so we did a big renovation here at the office, like a 1. 8 million renovation, tore it all down, built a new building basically. And he built me a podcast studio, which I'm in right now. And now that's what we're doing. So and I'm still trying to figure out how to take a hundred and a 112 year old insurance company and do what I know to do as an entrepreneur like you and I know we know marketing like how do you take a company this old with no face 

and 

put them on the map and get them following and get, you know, and so that's the mystery I'm still to this day trying to solve because these insurance agents, they just want to sell insurance and I'm like, I need some of y'all to get on camera.

Yeah.  So  

that's kind of my, I don't know,  obstacle where I turned AI kind of really shutting me down to, I'm going to take AI and figure out how to implement it for them. And we have made huge strides with implementing a lot of it here and, and, and helping them kind of do their job. Like my big thing is productivity.

Can we use AI for productivity? That's okay. I'm trying to save you some time. So you have more time with your family.  Talk to your clients. Like that is my only goal. It's not even about money. It is literally about what can we do to save you time 

so 

you can spend less time doing the mundane stuff and spend more time talking to your clients, having relationships, being with your family, going on vacation and not worrying about what's back at the office.

That is my real passion right now with using AI.  

What's one productivity workflow or. AI thing that you've, you've implemented that,  yeah.  

Okay. So I love geeking out. Like anytime I have to show my CEO something, for instance, a few months ago we were having an in service meeting. I show up at like eight o'clock in the morning.

He was like, there you are. I need help with the PowerPoint. And he just had this ugly looking PowerPoint. And he said I just need to make it look better, whatever. I was like, Oh yeah, I'll have it done in a few minutes. And so I literally take it, I load it into Gamma. Gamma is one of my favorite design apps and, and gave it back to him in two minutes.

And he was like, how did you do that? And I was like, here's a tool. So we had an in service today and he goes, he's telling everybody in the whole office, you're going to be so proud of me. I do this Gamma all by myself.  The tool. And the other thing I showed him that he geeked out about was Otter because Otter or any note taker, really, but Otter's been my favorite for about four years now pre AI because it joins the meeting with you so you can concentrate on the conversation without having to take notes and action items and then forget something and you can come back and chat with it and be like, what did we talk about?

When do I have to have that to him?  But if you give it the link to the meeting, especially for an online meeting, and it can record in person meetings, you just load the app on your phone. So every time I go into a conference meeting, I hit record, and then I can take that back and and create. All kinds of stuff with it.

One time I went into a meeting, I, I recorded and I got to hear the history of the company and I'd never heard that before, 

I was able 

to take that transcript and then have AI write me a story on the history of the company so I could post it on the website because that was something we didn't have before.

And I was just so glad that I was able to do that and be present in the meeting without worrying about anything else. So that was, that's one of my favorite tools. And of course, you know, chat GPT. 

Yeah, yeah. 

All the little LLM stuff, like L, L, L, L, M, L, L, M stuff. Using it for research and because I don't know insurance, but I have to write, I have to write and make content for an insurance company.

And so I kind of need to know what I'm talking about and taking pieces of content that are given to us from some of our service partners and repurposing it into blogs or, hey, writing a script for a video or whatever, you know, so. Just trying to get things done quicker. So I would tell you I've done more marketing myself as a solo person than I ever did the whole entire time I had this agency with all these people working for me.

Like I am able to churn out  more videos, more podcasts, more blogs. Like I can write 10 blogs in an hour and have it SEO optimized and posted and repurposed and then all, all the social media channels. I can learn more about SEO. I can learn how ads work. I've been able to teach myself more than I ever could before AI and figure it out, you know?

Yeah, you're on steroids now, pretty much. Yeah, 

don't stop me. Don't try to stop me.  

What are your thoughts on agents, AI agents? 

I was literally just telling my CEO that, because he was like, I'm so disappointed in how ChatGPT can't go and do these things. And I'm like, give it a minute. It's coming out this year.

AI agents are on the scene.  They're obviously in the beta phases, but I think a lot of them, there's one that I really like right now. I'll tell you what I did with it.  So we're trying to target hotel owners to sell insurance too. It's one of our specialty niches. So we have a tool called insurance X date, and I can download all the hotel owners in Texas, but it doesn't give me, it only gives me the entity name and the hotel address.

And most into most hotel owners are not at the actual hotel,  but I need to get to that owner specifically. So there's an AI tool called browse AI, and you can, you can get behind a login. So literally I say, Hey, browse,  I'm, I want you to log into this website. As long as there's not a two factor multi, whatever, sending you a code, it's fine, but log into this website and then.

Take this spreadsheet, take that entity name, plug it into the search, when that screen comes up, grab the entity address, owner's name, agent, they call it agent name, and for most of them it's the actual owner and not a lawyer, and then plug it into the spreadsheet, and also go find their LinkedIn profile, which is also available on this website I go to.

So, it would have probably, it was 600 on the list, it would have probably taken me a week. If I did it all day, every day, and it did it in three hours in the background. And then I got a full spreadsheet. I was able to create I did a marketing campaign. I'm direct mailing some of these people to get straight to them.

So that was, that was cool.  

Browse AI. I've never heard of that. I'm going to try 

it. And I only heard of it because I was trying to create an automation and make, and I was trying to figure out something and I was looking, I was browsing the tools available and browse AI was one of them.  And I was like, what's Browse AI?

And so that's how I found it was through that. But I saw a top 20 AI list the other day and Browse AI was in the top 20. So I was like, I used it once. It was amazing. I loved it.  

What newsletters are your go to?  

TER. Okay. Too long, didn't read. Yeah, they have a huge I actually got to talk to them.

They're outta Europe. They have people all over the world and so they have newsletters that are segmented, one for marketing, one for technology. They have ai. They got seven or eight newsletters and they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers to each one of them. I called them to see how much it would be to advertise 'cause you don't get much advertising space.

They only allow three per newsletter. And it was like. I think 15, 000 for one newsletter. Yeah. I was like. I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can spend that. I mean, I could spend that money. I just, you never know if it's going to work or not. 

Yeah. 

It might, but that's my favorite. Futurepedia has a newsletter that comes out once a week.

Futurepedia. io is a list of all the AI tools out there. And you can go browse for anything that you might need. You just put in like what you want it to do and it'll bring you, bring up all the AI tools. So I get a newsletter from them too.  

Never heard of that.  I'll check it out. 

Yeah, those are my two favorite. 

Wow, okay. Cool.  

Your brain's working. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Where do you see  yourself in AI in  a few years? 

It's so funny. So, okay, let me tell you a funny story.  You showed me notebook LM when you wrote your book, right?  And at the time I was like, wow, that sounds so cool. And if those who don't know, notebook LM is a free tool from Google. You just load up a document or a website or several documents in a website and it creates a little podcast for you.

It's called a deep dive and it's this man and woman and they're just talking. I don't even think you could change voices, but they, they do this. Great deep dive. So there's a bunch of like state of the insurance market stuff coming out right now. One of them is on commercial auto insurance like for truck drivers, which is one of our niches.

And so I took this PDF  of boring insurance stuff, state of the market. I loaded up into notebook LM because I really don't feel like reading it and I'm like, let me just see what it says. And it was so good. It made this great podcast about the state of the trucking insurance market. And I shared it with one of my coworkers who's in the trucking division here. 

And I said, Hey, if you, here's a tool, if you'd like it, I can throw it on YouTube. We can use it as a resource for your truck drivers.  And his reply was, is it AI? He didn't even listen to it. Is it AI? Of course it's AI. It's coming from me. Of course.  And so we had this whole debate and he was basically on his stances, listen.

AI is really relatively new. I don't think we should be using it in our workflow until it's had more time, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, don't get left behind, dude. Like it's already been on the market two years. Like.  And as fast as it's going, it's like when you have to replace your phone every year, it's like, it's going fast and and we had a debate basically over teams chat about he, his stance was let humanity be humanity, like, don't be creating these AI  podcasts.

And I was like, you know, let humans do it. And my question is what humans, like who's going to do it? Cause I didn't want to come into the studio and I'm really trying to get some content out for you. Like, listen, if you want to do things the hard way, please, by all means, go ahead. But if I can save you some time, cause this guy's in school still and doing sales and just got married, you know, like you need to spend time with your wife.

And so I'm like, I'm trying to save you time. I'm trying to give you resources so you can have conversations with your truck drivers. Well, luckily for me, my mom's a truck driver, so I sent her. I made it into a podcast. I sent it to my mom and I was like, I didn't even tell her it was AI. I just said, Hey, will you listen to this?

Let me know what you think about the content. She loved it. She shared it with a bunch of other truck drivers or safety manager. And she goes, you know, we knew some of this, but there was some things that surprised us. We didn't know about. And, and so  I'm hoping that I'm at the forefront. 

Yeah, 

especially even if I do end up staying in this insurance business, I would like to start being a leader for AI in this realm or, you know, and for entrepreneurs too, but  I went to a, an insurance conference recently and like, there's some talk about it and those were the most popular attendance.

Cause people want to talk about it. Cause you talk about insurance, you got claim issues and there's liability with using AI and dah, dah, dah. One of the biggest things right now is. Cybersecurity, a lot of policies are excluding AI and, and I'm like, let's go find a carrier that has AI included and let's start educating people on using AI responsibly, what to do, what not to do.

So I'm hoping that I think this first time I've said it out loud, maybe I could be a leader in AI in this industry, 

which 

surprising to me is so behind. Like they're very archaic in some of their systems and stuff. And I'm like, there's 

gotta 

be a better way, you know, 

I believe it. Yeah. 

And it's boring.

So let's make it and nobody is applying for insurance jobs. So how about we make it interesting for the next generation? Because unless your parents are in insurance, you probably aren't looking at getting a job in insurance, you know? And so I'm hoping to maybe get us on the map a little bit. That's really what I'm hoping to do.

So in the next three to five years, I'm really hoping to kind of be a leader in the AI world of not creating anything, but just kind of knowing what's out there and speaking about it. In businesses, what it looks like to get your business ready for AI. And those of you who haven't yet, I would say you need to get ready.

Like you need to start looking at it, researching it, figuring it out, how to implement it because it's coming. And I think you'd be a mistake if you don't let it into your business in some form or fashion, especially from credible sources like Microsoft's and Google's and stuff. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I appreciate your time and the stories.

If people wanted to ask questions about AI.  If insurance people, you know, wanted to know, like, what are you doing at your shop, you know, with AI, where would they find you?  

I'm on every social media platform under TheRealMelissaElizondo,  R E A L, TheRealMelissaElizondo, I'm on every platform except Twitter, so. 

Or X, sorry.  

And then TikTok temporarily with the ban, oh man. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it went down, it's back up, who knows. Maybe 

we'll see. Maybe it's still out 

when we, when this comes out, who 

knows. Yeah. Is that going to be your way of, your thought leadership kind of path forward? Would, would it be crazy? I'm 

trying LinkedIn right now, it's not going well. 

I'm not getting a lot of traction, but I'm posting consistently anyway. And so I'm trying to really target LinkedIn right now for just the talk on AI. I have had some like scribe is one of my favorite AI tools. And I posted a video, I have a.  There's an AI tool for that. And so they were one of the first ones I featured and I connected with the CEO and she sent me a Christmas card and I felt like, Oh my God, somebody famous knows me anyway.

So I've, I'm connect, I'm trying to connect in that realm. And I've had a couple of developers reach out to me asking me to test their AI. And  so I've done that too.  Anyway, that's my platform. I'm trying, I'm trying LinkedIn right now. I loved Tik Tok, but I'm trying to see if I can kind of make it in the LinkedIn area.

You're posting daily on LinkedIn.  

I, I am not. I'm probably posting two to three times a week right now. And I have been inconsistent since the holidays, so I need to get back at it. I know if I do it every day, I, I probably start gaining some traction according to all the articles I'm reading.  No? 

Well, from experience with the, the accounts that I'm running right now I would suggest multiple times a day. 

Multiple. Okay, 

then you diversify. You go long form right with the  no picture and then maybe another long form with a personal picture and then just the quote cards, right? And it's just a kind of what people 

like and share. Like, 

yeah,  chances are. Very few people will like or a few people will see it.

So the impressions and the reach is, it's pretty tough. But I'll share with you how that can grow. So videos, videos are okay. They're in theory, people are experiencing reach right with videos. Not much though, especially if you're trying to revive it. But post the articles.  If you could do two a week,  just by virtue of it being an article, it has a much greater impression reach.

Okay. 

Here's the key though. Here's the kids, two things. You want to have an automated connection request you know, mechanism going in the background that's targeted to your people from sales navigator. So let that run. And then add an automated, like, thank you kind of thing without sending a message on the connection request.

So no message on the connection request, but the moment they do connect, send a message there. Because what happens is  just a thank you. Yeah. Happy New Year. What's up? What that does is that then forces. Your three posts to show up on their feed and if you're writing for that audience, that person is most likely going to engage.

And that's where number two comes in the commenting,  spend more time, like front load all your articles and your, your posts, schedule them out, but then spend the majority of your time, probably 30 minutes a day, 45 minutes commenting. Going to other people's stuff, comment, comment, comment. It's that reciprocal kind of, they see you comment, you know, but it's actually the more they see you,  right?

So a lot of people won't see you in the comments, some will, but they'll see the message notification at the top of the post saying that you commented. 

Yeah, so yeah,  it's like have you heard of the reticular activator thing with marketing so I told you I'm looking for a car and You I was like, hey, if you see a car for sale, just let me know You're probably not gonna remember but if I'm like, hey, I need a late model Blue Mustang with a white stripe down the side, like you will remember for a certain amount of time and you may see a red Mustang, but you're like, Hey, mostly you need a Mustang.

And so it's called the reticular activator. So when they see your name or your brand name for a little while, you're top of mind. And so if you happen to hit them at the right time, when they need that service or whatever, then hopefully you're top of mind. I have seen that cause I, I do interact that same way.

Or I've had people interact with me that same way. And that's how I've connected with them and also back even. Early on in Facebook, I had people who were commenting on my Facebook stuff a lot. There was a lender and specifically this guy, Matt, and he just kept commenting and was seemed very personable, laughing at my stuff, making comments on my posts.

And then when he reached out to have coffee because he was going to be in town and I knew he was a lender, I was open to it. Yeah, and then we became friends. So 

yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. That's 

smart. So articles twice a week.  

I would push out twice a week. 

Oh, 

yeah, 

yeah. Yeah, I do twice a week.  Video, but run that connection request. Yeah, run the connection request. I use bot dog, super, super inexpensive, but it takes the URL. But the key for bot dog though, is to keep your URL string and the number of people to about 300. Cause I used to do a thousand and then it would connect with like 20 a day. 

The longer it went, the less relevant the people are in the thousand  of the searches, right? So I would try to get the first 300 and those are all your bread and butter people. And then you just got to go back and do a different one to get a whole different 300. Put that in  and they actually reply. Oh, thank you.

Happy New Year's to great. Awesome. Versus the other ones. The irrelevant. I'm like, I don't like, I don't want to target you and they don't really do anything.  Yeah,  and be careful for the bot or the AI comments.  So you'll see a ton of  Posts that have 500 comments. Yeah, 490 are AI, you know, so it's not valuable  That's where you can go against the grain do like a three word thing or even a picture with the meme Right.

So, cause everybody's doing the, oh, value post and they repeat what you're saying and yeah, this is the perfect time to stand out with like one word or one or do an emoji sentence or something, you know, but everybody's  AI commenting. And yeah, but the 

cool thing about those newsletters, the TDLR one too long, didn't read ones.

They will feature people's LinkedIn posts and then you go click on it and you. Get this great post. That's kind of teaching you something about marketing and then you can share it, like it, whatever, comment. And so I might, I might start commenting more. I've been sharing and not necessarily commenting or connecting with anybody.

I haven't done any of the LinkedIn navigator connection stuff cause I just, I just haven't, but I need to.  

I need to connect with all the insurance people too. Now that's your lane and just hit them all up and be the insurance person for AI, you know,  I mean the AI person for insurance. Yeah, you'll show the game, dude. 

I'm glad we had this 

conversation. Thank you for having me on your show. Yeah, 

yeah. So A guest post, right? You can guest post on other So I have some sites if you want to write to it, dude. I'll give you a byline, we'll put there, and then  Put it out. And now they see, Oh, she wrote on there. Yeah. She's a thought leader.

Absolutely. 

Oh yeah. And on the featured portion of LinkedIn, I have some of the podcasts I've been on. I was on the news one time, so I had that on there too. And so yeah, cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to. 

Let's do it, man. Okay. Cool. I appreciate you. Thank you for everybody. Go to Melissa Alexander's LinkedIn, the real.

Melissa Elizondo on everywhere else while TikTok's up, go find her there. She's got a lot of good material. If you're interested in LinkedIn, ghostwriting management, all that stuff,  you hit me up and we'll take care of you,  man. It's been a pleasure. I'm grateful. And just hearing how you communicate with the Lord.

I, I know your future is taken care of, man. So you want him to be a thought leader? He's got your back. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, it'll come to fruition. Just stay faithful. 

Awesome. Will do. Thank you. 

Amen. Okay.  This is 

stop.