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Different types of people that solicit through LinkedIn?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 4:18 pm
by TopHatFox
Recently an entrepreneur reached out to me on LinkedIn: a young entrepreneur who's business plan it is to get to know people--particularly what they could use help with at this point in their professional life--and then connect people to other people. He then has salespeople sell marketing solutions to help those people get noticed by others in their niche, get more people to their websites, etc. Fairly straight forward nose to the grindstone sales and marketing entrepreneurial path combined with accumulating social capital via value sharing. He seemed like a young kid just getting his start in entrepreneurship, and I couldn't pick up any signs of sketchiness besides that the people he connects me to might want to sell me something (which, admittedly, could be useful).

In my case, we exchanged different personal development resources we've liked; he offered to connect me to a LinkedIn consultant to make my linkedIn even better (for a fee obviously); and suggested that I would likely benefit from monetizing my finance knowledge not only in a job, but by creating my own personal finance consulting company and blog/Youtube following, especially emphasizing that it should be aimed to the vanaboding, vagabonding, or FIRE community. Nice. : )

Anyway, what different kinds of people have solicited you on LinkedIn? Which have been most helpful? Which are best avoided?

Re: Different types of people that solicit through LinkedIn?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 5:00 pm
by Dragline
Mostly just head hunters and people with stuff/services to sell or trying to attract an audience. Colleagues, former colleague, old acquaintances and friends IRL are other groups. And people seeking employment.

If I didn't have a job or wanted a different job it might be useful. Right now it just acts like some kind of extended contact list that may or may not get used some day. I would probably not pay for anything solicited there.

Note that LinkedIn has become a de facto public profile for you if you are interviewing, so make sure whatever you have up there is not contradicted by anything you submit to a potential employer. It's a place to be informative, but not creative in your outward presentation.

Re: Different types of people that solicit through LinkedIn?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:22 pm
by chenda
Just occasional headhunters/recruitment agencies peddling their wares.

I hardly ever bother with it tbh, I don't like its messy format. Plus it tells you who's being looking at your profile, so no stalking ex-colleagues ;)

Re: Different types of people that solicit through LinkedIn?

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 6:47 am
by BlueNote
I think what you're experiencing is something that linkedIn is probably , or at least should be, aspiring to. The LinkedIn I know is mostly my colleagues with occasional fly by night peddlers/recruiters and less occasionally a good head hunter. It's good that you're getting networked into this type of activity it sounds, on the face of it, like 'good' capitalism where value is added by all parties in an exchange transaction.

Starting a business is long and hard work and there are a great many FIRE/personal finance blog/youtube/business people out there you'd be competing with for revenues. I bet you'd be surprised by the time and effort some of these people are putting into producing their material while they act as if they're just joe blow FI people sharing their knowledge (all part of the marketing, always be selling!). I'm not saying you couldn't do it but I am being the devils advocate, you seem young so that's the best time in life to try it out IMHO. It sounds like you're being connected to various types of business consultants and business services. It's relatively easy to interview someone, gather up some facts and with the help of a search engine find a marketing niche or subculture market segment to serve. This is what is known as business consulting and many firms employ smart people to make money at these activities. These consultants are often (not always) very bad at the nitty gritty of execution and implementation because they lack experience by way of executing those ideas. A good Business and marketing strategy for a new comer is almost always built on a generic differentiate/focus strategy. Implementation/execution/operationalization of said business strategy is hard and IMHO that's where most thinking personalities fail. Often one needs to fail a couple of times to learn the ropes and earn their school of hard knocks degree before they're successful and become a profitable operator. Sometimes starting a business is good because you find something else that works better than the original plan that you wouldn't have found unless you started the first business. I don't know many successful entrepreneurs who succeeded on the original business idea but you come up with better ideas when you build up experience points.