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Today’s show featured an interview with Jessica Samuels. She will be a keynote speaker at the Conference.
IES Women in Sales Program Director Gina Stracuzzi conducted the interview.
Find Jessica on LinkedIn.
JESSICA’S ADVICE: “Define what you want your LinkedIn to do for you. Because that’s going to tailor it based on, do you want to just be seen as a more respectable, authentic and leader that’s also a thought leader? Then you’re going to shift your LinkedIn a bit differently than if you want to launch a part-time business and attract clients. Define your goal as to what you want LinkedIn to do for you.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Gina Stracuzzi: Welcome everyone. I am super excited for my guest today. Jessica Samuels is one of our newest faculty members in the Women in Sales Leadership Forum. She is also CEO of Evolve Career, where she serves her clients as an executive coach and fractional CHRO. She is nothing short of fabulous. Welcome, Jessica.
Jessica Samuels: Thank you, Gina. I appreciate the introduction. I’m really honored to be here today.
Gina Stracuzzi: Tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into the questions and answers. How did you get to where you started your own company, and the work you do?
Jessica Samuels: I hail from Maryland, born and raised, and my mom is from Richmond, Virginia. My dad is from Ghana, West Africa. I love not only being a minority executive, but also having an international flair in terms of my background. I think that’s shaped me because my father also is an entrepreneur, and my mom was the straight and narrow executive, and so I was exposed to both corporate leadership positions and then also the freedom and the innovation and entrepreneurship from a very early age. But now I have left corporate America and am full on business owner full time. My story’s a little unique in terms of how I entered into entrepreneurship, which we’ll get into probably in a bit.
I’m the CEO of Evolve Career, and I hold many hats, but my main hats are as a certified executive leadership career and business coach. I also serve as a speaker and facilitator on all things leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Then I also serve as a fractional CHRO for emerging companies that don’t necessarily have a head of HR in-house. I spend a lot of my days helping high-performing and overlooked talent land executive promotions into C-suite roles in both corporate America and in startups. I partner with organizations that are committed to building, retaining, and transitioning their top talent through my leadership and career development programs.
My main goal is to grow inclusive leadership teams. How I do that is I help them reach their business goals, manage rapid change, and then also avoid employee burnout, which we know is quite capable. After the pandemic, we saw a lot of burnout and folks exiting the formal workforce. But hopefully through my coaching and my leadership development programs, their leaders are just feeling more empowered to show up for themselves as well as their teams.
Gina Stracuzzi: You are so right about the burnout. It was funny, we were just having a conversation about this yesterday, myself and some other people, that it’s kind of snuck up on people. I think it’s a delayed reaction from the pandemic. I think at first, we were all like, “Oh my gosh, back to life as normal.” Then it’s like, “Yeah, something feels off.” It’s a real thing. You know that our goals align when it comes to elevating more women and minorities into leadership roles. I love that about you and your background.
The thing that you do for us in the forum is talk to people about their brand and what they’re conveying through their LinkedIn profiles. Ways to not only make those better, but also to use them for sales, which I love, and you are really so successful at it. I know the audience is going to get a lot of value out of what we’re going to discuss here. I know that you want to help women particularly identify new ways to use LinkedIn. Talk to us a little bit about how LinkedIn can support career growth, job search, and business revenue goals.
Jessica Samuels: There’s no secret, I am quite obsessed with LinkedIn. Everyone laughs when I say that because I also say in the same breath, “I don’t like social media.” But LinkedIn has just been such a powerful tool to help me and my team transform the lives of rising executives, primarily by helping them expand their leadership impact. They’ve been able to land executive promotions and also launch profitable businesses. I am one of the guinea pigs in this method, and I’ve also been studying in a doctoral program, really studying minorities and women in their path to the C-suite, if that’s what they desire. What are some of those barriers? Then what are some of the enhancers to them achieving executive career success?
What I’ve boiled it down to is that we are not doing a great job of brand management, our personal reputation, and then also advocating for ourselves in terms of being the manager of our careers. I think there’s expectations that our leaders maybe are going to be sponsoring us into those positions. While we hope for that to be the case, sometimes we may have to take things in our own hands. That’s my mantra when it comes to career management. The fun part about my role, I tell everyone I have the best career ever because I get to assist rising stars executives and entrepreneurs build authentic leadership brands that help them increase their confidence and their capabilities, as well as their compensation. If we start there from a foundational standpoint, brand management is critical for any executive and for women and for sales leaders.
When I started out in my corporate career using LinkedIn, I really used it as the traditional job hunt tool or refurbished resume. This is over 10 years ago, but it is now evolved into such a powerful tool beyond those two things. As a former president and a general manager over departments for human resources and organizational development programs, and even selling B2C and B2B products, I realized LinkedIn was the tool that essentially it was my digital handshake. People were meeting me before they met me, and I had to make sure that that persona was reflective of the authentic Jessica, but then it also helped accelerate the sales cycle. We know in the marketing and sales land, for a brand to become a household name, we have to have the KLT factor. We have to have the know, like, and trust factor. What better way to help people know, like, and trust you faster by using a digital brand, i.e., LinkedIn.
When we think about LinkedIn, it’s our jobs to tell a story behind our career. We’re more than just the titles that we’ve held. We’re more than just the organizations that we’ve worked at. We’re more than just the accomplishments that we’ve had in particular roles. It’s the full package. When I look at over 16 years being in business and 20 plus years being in corporate America as a leader, I find too often that clients, really it’s an afterthought for them to think about their brand. It’s even more of an afterthought to leverage LinkedIn as a tool for brand management.
Gina Stracuzzi: I love that kind of visual that what you said gave me, this idea that this is like a handshake. I know I’m one of those people that the way someone shakes my hand tells me a lot about them. That really hit home. I think that that is a good way to look at it. That this is you being introduced before you’re being introduced, and you got to get it right.
Jessica Samuels: You got to get it right. The challenge that many of my clients have, because I have three different types of clients. I’m one of those unique executive coaches that focuses on leadership development, also career pivots and career transitions, and then new entrepreneurs that are maybe leaving corporate America and starting their own thing. As an executive coach, I can flex and help folks realize, how do you leverage LinkedIn for leadership development? Or if I’m in a sales role, how do I win more business? That’s one path, utilizing LinkedIn for that.
Then there’s, what most people think traditionally to look at LinkedIn is, I’m going through a career pivot. Maybe I’ve been laid off, maybe I’m looking for an external promotion. Maybe I’m coming back into the workforce after a career break, whether that was burnout, or childcare, or elderly parents. I’m getting back into the workforce. Then there’s the leader that has traditionally used LinkedIn for the first two reasons, business development. If I’m a sales leader or career transitions, I’m looking for a new job and they’re saying, “Hey, I’m actually retiring and I’d like to assume more board positions.” Or maybe I’m kicking off my consulting business for the first time, and I have zero idea how to use LinkedIn for lead generation and for brand reputation management, as a corporation, not just me as the individual. I love LinkedIn for that reason, because it’s so versatile of a tool that you can leverage it for pretty much any stage you are in in your life and in your career.
Gina Stracuzzi: I know you have shared some really good techniques with participants of the forum, and so I really encourage anybody that’s listening to go to your website and learn more about what you do and how you do it. Let’s talk a little bit about a networking strategy, which is, again, something that you cover in the forum. I think this is probably more important now than it has been anytime, the whole LinkedIn networking, because we still aren’t back in a full-fledged going to networking events. There are some industries that are a little bit better than others, but most of us, if we’re left to our own devices, are like, “Ooh, yeah, I don’t really want to dress the bottom half of me today. Only the top half is camera ready. I don’t feel like going out and making nice with people.”
Talk to us a little bit about how a networking strategy can connect you with investors or potential clients, because as you say, people have used LinkedIn for so long in looking for work. But you’re really advocating for using it for all kinds of things.
Jessica Samuels: Absolutely. I’d say as a corporate executive turned entrepreneur over the last 16 years being in business, I actually had my business as a part-time, just labor of love. I started to career transition early on from first job being a teacher, believe it or not, and prepared to be a principal one day. But I realized, you know what, I am a little bit too much of a mover and shaker, and I don’t like the rails within the public school system. I knew private sector was going to be where I needed it. It was faster. I could be more agile and that was my space. Leaving teaching into corporate America, I had to quickly understand how to rebrand myself so that recruiters would pick me up.
As I shared that career transition story with just my network, a lot of folks were interested. I majored in this, I’m not really happy. How did you pivot? I’m not getting a promotion in this role. How did you pivot? Evolve Career started essentially from a labor of love. When I did that 16 years ago, it evolved in just, hey, this is college saving money for my kiddos. That’s just what it was. It wasn’t necessarily supposed to be this business where it was going to be a seven-figure earner. It was, I love coaching people. As the HR path expanded from health education teacher to more HR and learning and development and organizational development, then I added executive leadership coaching into the tool house.
Then that happened, and then I ended up being in real estate and real estate investing, started flipping houses with my honey. That’s when I realized the power of marketing. I was a novice at it, but I would say nine years ago when I started flipping houses, it was just this world opened up to me. Then I realized the power of marketing, “Okay, I need to get with the program.” In my space of executive leadership and career coaching, LinkedIn was the platform to be used for marketing purposes.
Fast forward, I have Evolve Career. I’m rising my corporate executive career. In my last two C-suite positions, I actually turned up the notch with LinkedIn for business development. I was recruiting members into my community, looking for more leads for sales of a learning and coaching platform. I just started connecting with leaders on LinkedIn through organic networking, truly wanting to be knowledgeable about what they were doing, what were priorities for them. It wasn’t a sales pitch. It was truly networking to networking and I loved it.
I am an extrovert on another level, but I enjoyed networking through LinkedIn because it was low pressure. It was low ego, low pressure. You can know a little bit about the person before you meet with them. You can find some of those commonalities a bit different than your traditional in-person. You’re like, “Hope this stranger is somebody that I’m going to connect with.” With LinkedIn, you can kind of see, “Wait, maybe we have a shared alma mater,” or they’re passionate in the homelessness support the way that I am. Or maybe they’re into speaking, or maybe they follow the same guru in leadership development, or AI or whatever it is that we’re passionate about.
To me, LinkedIn is just a powerful tool to not only calm the nerves when it comes to networking, but it also allows you, I think, to be far more productive. Once I say the networking conversation happens, now you’re building meaningful relationships with folks that could either be recommending you just the way we met, Gina. I always tell this story, my network was so strong that you needed a backup speaker for your conference, and my name came up. That’s what LinkedIn does for you when you take it seriously, you position yourself as a thought leader in your space, and then you’re the go-to expert for when someone needs someone to chat about or present about topics on this subject.
I have become the executive coach that is very popular because I really know how to maximize LinkedIn to obtain C-suite roles, to get paid speaking gigs, to get corporate deals. We’ve chatted about this. I’m really proud to be one of the few minority women executives that are also CEOs of their own companies and that have achieved six-figure months. That’s not common, but I leverage LinkedIn in a way that I can have predictable income in my business by the way that I network and by the way that I set up strategic partnerships and also manage my reputation.
Gina Stracuzzi: One thing that you said, when you’re doing in-person networking and you walk up to somebody, you don’t know until you start talking to them if there’s going to be synergy or there’s going to be some ways that you two can help each other. Where LinkedIn, you know how you can work together. You know what that synergy is just by looking and then you can address it head on and show your value, show the value in connecting right away. I’m a big believer of doing things in person but it does make it much more efficient and impactful.
Jessica Samuels: I agree. Let me piggyback off of what you’re mentioning about leveraging LinkedIn to be more effective with networking. A lot of folks can actually be more effective in person if they do some research and prospecting before they go to these events. One of my executive leadership coaching clients, she’s in the process of rebranding her business and wanting to leverage LinkedIn to gain more clients. She said, “Jessica, I know that I’m supposed to win business at these conferences when I go there, but I’ve never been able to successfully do that.”
We established a conference strategy for her with preparing who she was going to meet before she went there. She set up coffee dates with folks, she told them they were coming. She told her network she was coming. It was such an intentional way to leverage time and money spent at a conference. She left there with a new paid executive advisor position. She is being asked to be on a paid speaking panel in a few months. She has two new leads for fractional chief operating officer roles. It was powerful. Again, we did some work around her branding prior to her attending the conference, as well as practicing her elevator pitch.
It is criminal how often some folks don’t know how to actually share within five sentences what they do, why they do it, how they help clients, and how someone can work with them. That’s why I’m in business, truly, because a lot of folks have decades of experience. They know what they do, and they know how to do it well, but they don’t know how to articulate it digitally and verbally. That then kills deals.
We should be having, as sales leaders, especially women’s sales leaders, I always look at, I’m like, conversations need to turn into cash. Period. They should be moving things along to put cash in your pocket. It is not always about, is that cash sale going to happen that day? Probably not. But I was telling my sales coach the other day, I was like, “Look at this, this deal closed in June, and I’ve been chatting with this woman since November.” I was just fascinated how these conversations I was having with this leader ended up turning into a four-figure sale. I’m just fascinated how sales works.
Once you figure out your sales cycle, you can start to appreciate most of my deals don’t necessarily take months, but I love the fact that I literally reached out to this woman on LinkedIn cold. We garnered up a conversation. We had a conversation on Zoom. We stayed in touch. We had another follow up. She’s like, “I think I’m ready.” I’m like, “Okay, I’m ready for you if you’re ready for me.” She told me, she’s like, “I know that you’re the one. Now let’s talk about this.” There are several other executive leadership career and business coaches out there, but why am I the one? Just a few, but why am I the one? I’m saying this in the most low ego way. It is because my branding sets myself apart from anyone else.
I’ve taken the time to capture testimonials from past clients. Us as sales leaders, when you have somebody that is pleased with the work that you all do, or your product, I can’t stress enough, capture testimonials. When people say third party credibility doesn’t matter, I can’t agree with that. When someone lands on my LinkedIn page, they know what I do, why I am passionate about it, who I’ve helped. These words are coming from my past clients and they are already selling me to this prospective client. I can tell you another client that I’m working with. She said, “Yeah, I just wanted to meet you to make sure that we jive together, because I’ve already done my research and I’m already ready to sign up.”
“What? You’re ready to give me five figures? Just like that?” That’s the power of LinkedIn, is I have branded myself as an expert in my space. Not only am I saying it, but I have other people verifying how I’m doing great work. Then we haven’t even talked about LinkedIn content strategy. It’s not only the branding of your profile, it’s not only the third-party credibility with your recommendations. Now we get into digital portfolios, and then we get into content strategy. How are you providing value to your community? Over the course of 10 plus years I’ve been using LinkedIn, I was an early adopter, but I still didn’t know what I was doing you all. I still go in there like, “I hope they didn’t change anything that is too drastic.” But they change all the time, which is good. We want enhancements.
But I tell you, it took me a while to get comfortable with deploying a content strategy. I will tell you that this has turned up a notch because I transitioned from part-time CEO to full-time CEO about six months ago. I said, “Well, I’ve got the time,” because the reason was, “I do not have the time.” For years, “I don’t have time. I don’t have time. I don’t have time to be posting no content.” Now I post content regularly, and I love it because I’m offering value to my existing clients. I am offering value to my prospective clients. People know that I’m walking the walk as I talk the talk.
That is truly something that I’m proud about because as business owners, I don’t think that we spend time, listen, we have a thousand different things to do as corporate executives or people that are in transition, you have so much to manage. Your teams, your goals, your families, your self-care, and content just is 10th on the list. But once we prioritize content, it is, again, one of those things that allow future customers to see you as the expert. It shortens the sales cycle when they understand, “You know what? This person I can trust. You know why I can trust? Because I can go back a year and they’ve been saying the same things about this topic, and this rings true to the problems and the challenges that I’m facing.”
Gina Stracuzzi: We’ve seen in conversations we’ve both been part of, people use LinkedIn quite often on a very one-sided point of view.
Jessica Samuels: I’ve lost my job, or I’ve got a new job, I’m on LinkedIn.
Gina Stracuzzi: Or I’m having a meeting with somebody, so I’m looking them up. I was previously guilty of this let’s say four or five years ago, that I didn’t think about people looking me up. I was just in my world in terms of what I needed it for and what I was looking for and the information I was trying to gather. It is one of those platforms where you really have to think about how you’re coming across, which is the whole brand piece. Even the realization that, “Yeah, people are looking me up too,” as we heard.
It is that kind of realization that it isn’t just this thing that exists when we need it. It is this kind of living, breathing organism that if we’re going to be looking, we also have to be aware of how we’re coming off. It is quite easy to forget that. Let’s talk a little bit about the idea of putting up your profile and then just leaving it there. What do you recommend in terms of changing it?
Jessica Samuels: The first thing I wanted to just make sure we tell everyone is like, show yourself compassion. Because at the end of the day, this is storytelling and you may not have the gift of storytelling. Your expertise, I work in the space of healthcare and life sciences, medical devices, biotech, pharma, and technology fields, is usually where my clients are employed. Many of those roles don’t require them to tell stories. It’s a lot of technical expertise, a lot of strategy, but not a lot of marketing and creative time. That’s where the partnership between an executive coach can really help your story come alive. I’m gifted in hearing someone’s accomplishments and where they’ve worked and what are their passions, and how they have made impact and how they want to make impact in this next transition.
I create this beautiful story that they’re able to articulate confidently and authentically. That’s the beautiful part. If you take nothing else from this conversation about LinkedIn, is when you take this seriously, you actually will show up as a more confident leader. I guarantee it. I wake up every morning knowing I’m showing up. The real Jessica is on display and that allows me to have conversations with strangers. It allows me to reconnect with folks I haven’t chatted with in a while, and to see, “Well, how can I serve them?” Then it also allows me to know that I’m going to get new clients just by the way that I am sharing why I do what I do. It’s just a really great feeling to not feel insecure.
Really, that’s what it does. It removes insecurity from you as a leader when you are intentional about your brand and you leverage a platform like LinkedIn. Again, there’s a lot of other platforms out there. You have to go on the platform where your clients are. But for me, I am working with executives that are trying to win B2B business. LinkedIn’s the place to be. I’m closing corporate deals left and right by staying on LinkedIn.
Career transitions, I remember being in a senior executive role. I’m like, “I think it’s time for me to be in a C-suite role.” What did I do? I rebranded. I made sure that my LinkedIn profile and all of my career materials were attractive to executive search firms and executive recruiters. I landed my first C-suite role before the age of 40. I was really proud of that because I knew that’s what I wanted. I wasn’t waiting for my organization to groom me or to be a part of the succession plan. I knew that I had to be what I would say is a bit more assertive in terms of my career aspirations as a minority and as a woman.
A lot of individuals are just holding on to the thought that someone is going to sit me in this role if I do a great job. While that may happen, it also requires you to manage your career and to be networking with people in your industry. They know what your skillsets are, and they know what your career aspirations are. That is going to help you, again, be more confident and to be able to manage your career with everything happening in organizations. I always say, don’t get ready, be ready.
Gina Stracuzzi: I love that. Well, we are at that point in the conversation where we like to ask our guests for one piece of advice that listeners can put into place today, something they can do to their LinkedIn profile that will be impactful.
Jessica Samuels: I have two tidbits. One, and I say this from the I speak and facilitate and coach on topics around leadership, career management, personal branding, executive presence, and entrepreneurship. The key here is to, number one, define what you want your LinkedIn to do for you. Because that’s going to tailor it based on, do you want to just be seen as a more respectable, authentic and leader that’s also a thought leader? Then you’re going to shift your LinkedIn a bit differently than if you want to launch a part-time business and attract clients. Define your goal as to what you want LinkedIn to do for you.
Number two, there’s usually this banner behind folks’ profile picture that is blank. That is just prime real estate to showcase your expertise in a particular space. Make those updates. Then I would say three, hire a coach that can help you with the rest of your profile. Even if you just need a LinkedIn profile makeover, I have a client now, they’ve had a lot of organizational, structural changes in the company, and she’s going to be essentially a brand ambassador for the organization. She was quite embarrassed about her LinkedIn profile, going to conferences and speaking. Take that seriously. If you don’t know how to make these updates and tell the story and pull all the pieces together, hire a coach that can help you do that. It’s fun when you work with someone that can give you an objective perspective, that can do the heavy lifting of the writing for you.
I gave you three tips, I can never really do one, but I hope that that helps folks feel inspired to set themselves apart from the crowd and to, again, increase their confidence. Because when you increase your confidence as a leader, you are also going to increase your capabilities as well as your compensation over time. That’s what it’s all about, career satisfaction and we’re going to be getting paid to build generational wealth.
Gina Stracuzzi: Absolutely. You can find Jessica’s contact information in the show notes if you want to talk to her about LinkedIn. Thank you, Jessica, so much. This has been awesome.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo