Selling Yourself on LinkedIn with Joseph Frankie III

 00:02
Josh Wilson
Good day, fellow dealmakers. Welcome to the deal. Scout. This show is all about deals and deal makers and people that are dedicated to helping deal makers do better deals. You're going to hear deals a lot in this conversation, so I'm going to shut up and bring on our guest, Just Joe, who's going to talk to us about transitions. Talk to us about merchandising yourself. Talk to us about selling yourself to the next deal. Joe, welcome to the show. 

 00:29
Joe
Josh, it's a pleasure to be here. Hey, thanks. Flofr having me. 

 00:33
Josh Wilson
Yeah, absolutely. Joe, where's home for you? 

 00:36
Joe
We're currently located in the greater Houston. 

 00:39
Josh Wilson
Area in Texas, the great country of Texas. My son was born in Dallas. Beautiful place. How long have you been in Texas for? 

 00:48
Joe
I was born and bred in Texas, down near the Mexican border in the Rio Graeme Valley. Spent 34 years in the military and got back here as fast as I could. 

 01:00
Josh Wilson
Got it. All right, so before we go into deals and such like that, man, I got to say thank you for your service in the army. My dad was army as well, but just thank you for your service. What did you do min the army? 

 01:14
Joe
Well, in the Army, I was a war fighter for 14 years, mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and special operations. I reached a point about after 14 years where they weren't meeting, you weren't going to be out in the field doing this stuff. I branch transferred into logistics because I'd made a name for myself for solving problems and saving money. I spent the rest of the year as a heavy load vision in the army. 

 01:49
Josh Wilson
Okay, got it. So you got out of the army. How old were you when you 34 years in the military? That's a long time. You get out of the military, how old were you? 

 01:59
Joe
I was 52 years when I retired with 30 years of active duty. 

 02:04
Josh Wilson
Got it. Now, I've seen a lot of people working on transition. I heard it's one of the big challenge points that people have is transitioning from military live 34 years into civilian life. Right. Because there's a lot of things that maybe just doesn't transfer, like, how to take down that target, right, like how to put a hole min that thing. How did you transition? What did AI. 

 02:28
Joe
AI transcription so initially, when I first got out, I tried to transition into the corporate world, and the corporate world, for the most part, doesn't need a 52 year old executive. Where I interviewed a lot of place, I think I really threatened the people because I had finally had one guy told me, he says, Joe, I mean, you're ideal for this job, but we're not going to hire you. I said, well, help me here, because I just want to figure this out. He says, You've handled more money than the CEO. You've handled more people than the CEO, and you've handled bigger programs than the CEO, and you could take my job to Farm. He gave me some really good advice, and he says, Go find some people putting a deal together and where you can share your multifunctional, multifaceted experience set with sweat equity, that kind of stuff. 

 03:26
Joe
That was sound advice, and that's what I ended up doing. Worked on various cooperative joint ventures in China for two or three years, and power plants, chemical plants, just trying to put different deals together as well as do consulting when the opportunities came. 

 03:45
Josh Wilson
Yeah. Super cool. All right, so, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Airborne. Corpse. My dad used to he was screaming eagles, and he packed shoots. I forget which one. 

 03:58
Joe
The rigor? 

 03:59
Josh Wilson
Yeah. Well, he jumped for a while, and then he did some packed shoots after he caught a few bullets and a bayonet over in someone else's backyard. But, yeah, man, it's so cool. He's older than you, and he's passcode away now, but you guys may have crossed paths in the growing all right, so you're going for these job interviews. You're 52 years old. You're retired from the military, and that's really young to retire. You started really young in the army, and you were not finding traction. Right, right. 

 04:37
Joe
What I learned from that was before LinkedIn was here. The way that you did this is you went to the newspaper. 

 04:50
Josh Wilson
What's? 

 04:50
Joe
The newspaper? 

 04:51
Josh Wilson
Holy moly. I get it. You would go to the newspaper and make a phone call, but what was it like for you? What was going through your head as. 

 04:58
Joe
You'Re going through these transitions? It was the darkest days of my life. Because you're out there. You're in this experience set because you were in the womb of the army. Right. Now you've been born into this thing called the civilian world, and, you're a baby, and you really have to learn how to crawl, walk, and run in it without LinkedIn. You tried to talk to recruiters. You read the newspaper, who's hiring. You went to all the different things that were out there around 2003, 2004. And today, the newspaper almost doesn't exist. Certainly there's no classified ads in there where they've got the jobs listed. He just tried to get somebody to hear your story. You carried your resume. What LinkedIn has done for you in that way is it allows you a structure to articulate what you bring to the table, and in that way, you can get somebody to help you translate the military vernacular to the hiring manager vernacular. 

 06:24
Joe
It took me a while to and you just learned it by experientially, which means, hey, fail faster. Learn something. August yeah. 

 06:36
Josh Wilson
Here comes LinkedIn, and you're doing consultant work, and you're helping put deals together, and here comes LinkedIn, and you said you had a background in some executive recruiting, so how did these things start to form together? You couldn't necessarily get a normal corporate job, and you start doing these this, right? 

 06:55
Joe
What happened is I was working on this cooperative joint venture in China to bring wastewater infrastructure over there. How do I find people that were min the US that had experience working on a project in China? The first thing the team did is classical old methodology. You go get retained, executive recruiter, here's all the things that we need, all that kind of stuff. And it wasn't going anywhere. At the end of six months, they kept some of our money and said, we gave it a best effort, and we haven't found anybody. I said, hey, this is a waste. But, you know, I could understand. What happened with LinkedIn is I started learning how to use it. Way LinkedIn was back then was a Model T. What I was able to do, I said, okay, I can find people out here that worked in China, or I find one person that worked in China. 

 08:05
Joe
You call them, get them on the phone, and say, yeah, talk to Billy Bob and Billy Rudy and Team kind of stuff. I said, wow, this is a powerful tool to use. I began to use the tool effectively for what were trying to do in China and just learned it inside and out and basically have used it extensively over the 18 years. Later on in my career, I was an executive recruiter with a top 2% firm, and we used it extensively. Now, the firm had a huge database of resumes, but on a LinkedIn profile, you'll find somebody that it's their job to keep it current. Right? If a person's not keeping it current, hey, okay, no problem. You can really find the people you need out there today. I think pretty much everybody's figured out that this is a tool, that you may not live it, but you need to master it enough to take care of yourself. 

 09:21
Joe
Yeah. 

 09:23
Josh Wilson
So here we are. How old are you now, Joe? 

 09:26
Joe
Gosh, I'm 70. 

 09:27
Josh Wilson
Awesome, man. I love that you're still live in the game and you're still doing deals, and you're a deal maker, right. You cannot stop. 

 09:37
Joe
No, I mean, what I have done over. In 2017, Harvey flooded our office. I looked at my partner and said, hey, you want to re outfit an office? He said, no, I think I'm going to the house and I'm going to work this side of things. I said, Well, I'm going to the house and figure out how to work my side of the stuff. It took about six months for that transition to get your whole organized so you can work and put the infrastructure in and then design your business so that you could work from a home office. And I always thought, what was me? If Harvey hadn't hit us, we'd have an office. COVID came and said, oh, my gosh, the good Lord took care of me. He forced me he forced me to redesign my business so that I could operate it this way. 

 10:43
Joe
In doing so, it's a lot of fun. I'm at that stage where, hey, if it's work, I don't want to do it. If I enjoy doing it and enjoy helping other people help themselves, it's rewarding. 

 11:01
Josh Wilson
Yeah. Now, what I found and I love your thoughts on this live you now help people articulate their value proposition and merchant themselves, right? Live themselves are dial that you have to sell to do further deals, right? Like the deal makers onto the next deal, and you help deal makers live, position themselves correctly. What are some of the things that you have found over the 18 years of being on LinkedIn or whatever? Live. What are some things you find that people are just doing? It massively wrong. 

 11:42
Joe
The 689 people I coached, the first 300 people said, joe, hey, you need to have a pamphlet. You need to have a book. There ought to be an e book where's the PDF on this stuff? It took me a while, but Lori Ruff, she's my co author, she and I wrote a book that's 1 hour long, and that's the hardest thing I've ever done, is write a 1 hour book. And it's called LinkedIn. The five minute drill for executive networking success. It's not a complicated book because it's being used in high schools, and people will say, well, this is for an executive. I said, well, it's really for anybody, but an executive won't pick it up unless it's for an executive. 

 12:30
Josh Wilson
Heath. 

 12:31
Joe
I couldn't believe the publisher said, hey, Joe, we got to pay this company to certify how long it takes to read this. It's certified 69 minutes read for a sophomore in high school. Super cool. 

 12:47
Josh Wilson
Now, this comes from a guy who you've seen combat and you've seen some stuff you just said, the hardest thing I've ever done was wrote a book. A 1 hour book. 

 13:01
Joe
Yeah. 

 13:01
Josh Wilson
Explain that. 

 13:03
Joe
Well, it's easy to write a long book. I mean, it's just a stream of your consciousness, right? I think. There's 173 pages on the floor for this book to be 1 hour long. Then, secondly, executives don't have a lot of time, right? The idea was, you could pick this book up on a 1 hour plane flight, and you could be done with it, and there's a lot of resources in the back of it if you want to know more, it tells you where to go. I look at the whole LinkedIn stratosphere as LinkedIn 10120, 130-141-5161. There's PhD level LinkedIn. Okay. 

 13:51
Josh Wilson
Okay. 

 13:52
Joe
Most people just need the cusp of 301 to get what they want. This book was designed to take you from 101 to get you to 301 so that you could think about and frame your min about to get what you want. People say, Well, Joe, I mean, that sounds complicated. I said, well, have you ever been fishing? He said, yeah, my dad took me fishing. I said, do you like filet mignon? Oh, yeah, I love a good steak. I said, but do you take filet mignon and use it as bait? They said, no, man, we use the bait that the fish likes. I said, So, if you want to catch a trout, you use allure or bait that a trout likes. Right. What people do on LinkedIn is they use filet mignon to catch fish. In other words, what is it that you want to achieve? 

 14:55
Joe
Who do you want to find you, and have you given them the right date? 

 15:05
Josh Wilson
I totally get the idea of I'm a hunter, right? A deal guy is a hunter, right? That image makes perfect sense to me, and I'm going on a hunt, and it's like, what kind of deal do I want? What kind of person do I want to connect with? You got to go, what's the right bait? Right? What do you mean by that? Give me an example of good versus bad. 

 15:27
Joe
Okay, well, for example, I have another example that I use called the sword saber and scalpel. You first get on LinkedIn, you're kind of using it like a big sword. It's a twohanded instrument. It's swinging a sledgehammer, right? It's not deft, and it takes all your strength to move it around. As you learn more about LinkedIn, then you can kind of use it like a saver, and so you can kind of poke and light and slash and whatever. As you learn more about LinkedIn, you can use it like a scalpel. What you have out there is people using swords to do heart surgery. For example. I'll give you an example. I'm working with a client right now. He knows exactly what he wants, and there's three jobs in this Metroplex by three different companies. He knows the line number of the job. He knows the title. 

 16:35
Joe
What I've showed him is how to find out who's going to be the supervisors of those jobs min those companies. I mean, LinkedIn is a business intelligence tool, and so we've kind of mapped out who those supervisors are. His mission over the next 18 months is to virtually connect and meet those people. After he virtually connects to meet those people is go have coffee with those people. At the end of the day, in 18 months, one of those three jobs is going to be open, and his mission is to be known by everybody that's going to have some say so on that job because people will hire known entities over unknown entities. That's a job of using LinkedIn like a scalpel. 

 17:33
Josh Wilson
Yeah, and strategic, too. You see these bots and you see these messages read out hello. It actually says Live, hello, first name. I'm like, God, someone just either paid someone in the Philippines or they just had an automated tool reach out to me. I ignore 90% of my messages, 99% probably because you have a great size following. You get to the point where you have all these people, and then you could just tell the difference between real and not real. Do you feel that? 

 18:02
Joe
Yeah. Live, for example, when I send out a connection request with people, what I try to do is follow up with a very brief phone call, just an introductory discovery phone call. And I found that extremely beneficial. A lot of people don't want to take the call, and that's okay. At least I try to offer it up, and I always learn something about that person. If somebody calls and says, hey, Joe, do this Josh guy that does podcast? He says, yeah, I do, and I talked to him the other day. It's really interesting. His dad was a parachute rigger heath. Okay, but I wouldn't know that unless I had some interaction with you. Yeah. 

 18:50
Josh Wilson
We talk about LinkedIn as a business intelligence tool for people AI transcription, right? Guy or Gals getting out of the military and they're trying to get into civilian life, right, or someone needs a job, and we talk about those kind AI transcription. For the deal makers, the transition is a deal by deal basis. The commercial broker needs to get the next building on lease up, or it needs to get the next listing or the next investment group. What about for deal makers? What are some things that you've seen work really well for deal guys? 

 19:28
Joe
You have to know what you want to know. Right. Based on that, in my view, what you try to do is connect with people that are going to be in your circle of influence, right, or might have some interest in that. Most capital markets are smart enough that on the first pass, you're not going to say, hey, I'm Joe, and I need you to work on this deal with me. You just want to establish a connection, work up the touch points and all that kind of stuff. By the third touch point, you might say, well, this guy is not a fit for this, and, hey, that's okay, too. That means you focus on the other things that are the other people or other opportunities that you're going to work on. 

 20:25
Josh Wilson
Got it. When coming to deal makers and as deal makers. That it's a it is a numbers, Graeme. You can take the approach of Live, this shotgun approach, and you can send out 100 messages and blast people. Or you could be more of like the label, the Pokes, or you could be like a scalpel and be very strategic and specific. Which do you think works the best. 

 20:53
Joe
For, okay, there's more than one school of thought on this. There is an efficacy for the shotgun approach. That's not mine. Mine's a one one thing because most of the people I'm working with are individuals, right? So, like, if I'm going to send out a LinkedIn invitation to you, I would have looked at your LinkedIn profile, say, okay, this is a guy that I'd like to be connected with. Hey, Josh, here's two or three things that we have in common. Please connect if you so desire. Right away they're going to learn that some machine didn't put this together and that some human being actually looked at their profile. Most people will give you the benefit of the doubt. If you have a good profile, somebody's going to come back and say, well, do I want to be connected to this guy? That's where you have to have a good profile. 

 21:58
Joe
Because if I go and say, look, I had the most wonderful podcast in the world and you need to talk to this Josh guy, well, the first thing they're going to do, they're going to go to your LinkedIn profile. Even if they Google you, the number one hit is going to be your LinkedIn profile. That is a drug deal between LinkedIn and the major search engines. 

 22:24
Josh Wilson
What do you mean by that? 

 22:25
Joe
So, in other words, most people, if you go to Google, type in their name, the first hit is if they have a LinkedIn profile, then the first comeback is going to be the LinkedIn profile. Ian ihill NGBN your website or anything else that gets hyper traffic. Right? What that does is the LinkedIn profile takes you to the top of the Google thing. That didn't occur without some arrangement with the search engine. 

 22:57
Josh Wilson
Yeah, and that's so true. When someone calls me, text me, when I see a message, the first thing I do because I have a pretty good community and I found that I need to also protect absolutely, because when you have a podcast show or when you have an audience, people want to get on. The first thing I'll do is I'll do a Google search. I'm looking at their LinkedIn. First thing I don't carry a business card anymore. People. Live, hey, let's connect. You have a business card. I go, let's connect on LinkedIn, send me your phone number and we'll connect that way. And then I do that basic search. If I find things about live fraud or SEC stuff. I'm like, Dude, stay away. Right? It's so true and that LinkedIn is not just a social media platform for us to show, like, what kind of new fancy car we got. 

 23:44
Josh Wilson
It's a business network, business intelligence tool. It's very powerful. 

 23:50
Joe
It is, because I talk to a lot of Vietnam veterans and that era. A lot of them not interested in transparency, don't want to be on the grid. I said, hey, no problem. If you're going to do business in today's world, then transparency is kind of required. I didn't even have a website until the publisher forced me, as a condition of publishing, to have a website. All my business came directly from my LinkedIn profile. 

 24:28
Josh Wilson
No kidding. Someone comes to Deal Maker and they go, joe, listen, we know we need to be on LinkedIn. I've been ignoring this thing. I set it up four years ago. Haven't updated it or whatever. Where do you even start, right? So you help people do it. 

 24:45
Joe
Heath. 

 24:46
Josh Wilson
Where do you even start? 

 24:47
Joe
So I start with them. First thing when I work with somebody is I end up turning their head inside out. I like, It okay, because you got to see the world in a different way, and I know when that happens. Once you see the world in a different way, you kind of see what you see where you are in the Valley, right? Because I could be one terrain feature looking at this town, and you could be on the other, and we're both looking at the town, but we have a completely different view. The key then is once you can kind of see where you need to go, okay, open your eyes and see differently, then we talk about what is it that you need to do in order to make that happen? Because some people, hey, they're out of a job, in a job, or they're in a job, they want something else. 

 25:49
Joe
Not happy. They want AI transcription to a different sector. They want to pivot, and they want to stay in their own company and get promoted. And all those require slightly different strategies. I always start out with somebody is, okay, can you define where you're at? Now, most people can do that immediately. Where is it you want to go and define that? With those definitions, then we worked on the bridge they need in order to accomplish that, and they might say they want to do two things. We take that into account in the bridge building, and then they got a lot of work to do. It's like a structured writing of a term paper on yourself. 

 26:37
Josh Wilson
It's hard. 

 26:40
Joe
It's hard. That's why you need a little structure. You need a little focus. And it's not my first rodeo. 

 26:48
Josh Wilson
Yeah, you've helped 689 people, right? 

 26:51
Joe
And, people say, well, joe, why do you tell me that? I said, well, if you work with me, the first thing I'm going to tell you is if you can't measure your production, then save your money. Because if you can't say what you produce, then you can't sell yourself. If you can't say why your deal is a good deal, nobody's coming in there. 

 27:18
Josh Wilson
It's so true, man. There's so many times where metrics matter. 

 27:24
Joe
Metrics matter qualitative, but quantitative are the best that you can have. 

 27:30
Josh Wilson
Yeah, so true. Because it produces trust and credibility. 

 27:36
Joe
Right. I was just working with a CFO, he's out of a job. They sold a company. That was yesterday. He said, Joe, I need some help. I said, well, let's work on that. He did all these things to sell the company. I said, let's get those stories in there with the metrics. I said, okay, if they're confidential, let's combine two of your positions and say, in the last seven years I've worked in two companies. We've done these four financial transactions valued at such and such with teams of such and such that accomplished on time and on target and get that out there, because when I as an executive recruiter, when I'm looking for somebody that can solve the client's problem. The best way to find that is somebody that says they solve that problem with flofr somebody else. 

 28:43
Josh Wilson
Totally. 

 28:44
Joe
It's all about telling your story very succinctly with metrics on LinkedIn, story after story after. 

 28:53
Josh Wilson
Story, because people want to know, I have an issue, can you solve it for me? 

 29:00
Joe
Right. I get a position spec, it's three pages long, two pages long, but there's four items on there that there's actually blood and tear stains on there, and I highlight those. I'm doing that search, I'm looking for, okay, who has solved this problem? Why? Because it's an easy sell to the client. Hey, this guy has solved the exact same problem you're having, and you ought to at least call him in and spend an hour and running through the hoops. Heath and I've been extremely successful with that. 

 29:38
Josh Wilson
Do you still do recruiting or just. 

 29:42
Joe
I don't chase it. I just finished a CEO search and facilitation. I call it Facilitation because it's whatever it takes to get the person, ? It's a lot more than a search. It's accommodating. There's two sides to every deal. Right. You got to make sure all parties are good to go in that. I just finished one in August for a medical services company. I just don't chase the work anymore. Clients that have used me before and that kind of stuff. You don't have to go through that whole wrangling of, hey, I got to do it this way. It's going to be this percentage. I'm done with that. 

 30:35
Josh Wilson
You're more like a scalpel your precision. 

 30:39
Joe
If you want the purple unicorn, I've been able to find at least a dark blue one yes. 

 30:48
Josh Wilson
Behind you now that your office is home. If house caught on fire or flooded again or something like that, and everybody got out safe, all heartbeats are out, dogs, pets, whatever, family. You could only grab one material possession out of your office, what would you grab? 

 31:07
Joe
Laptop. 

 31:09
Josh Wilson
Yeah, I got it. 

 31:12
Joe
The reason I say I grabbed that is because I've got my business where I've coached in, I think, 14 different countries now, and I've coached from the Bahamas, Las Vegas, wherever my wife likes to be. The only requirement that I have is got to have WiFi and phone service. 

 31:34
Josh Wilson
Yeah. It comes to deals, you've seen a lot of deals, and you've helped a lot of people with transitions on their LinkedIn and such. So you did mention a book. What was the name of that book? One more time. 

 31:47
Joe
It's called LinkedIn. The five minute drill for executive networking success. 

 31:54
Josh Wilson
Give us maybe a point or two out of the book. Deal makers listen, min, they go, I could apply that immediately and get some type of better result. 

 32:03
Joe
Well, the most frequent thing I got from executives was, hey, I don't want to be on this LinkedIn stuff, but I kind of got to be there, and so I don't want to spend any time on it. So, Lori and I worked up the five minute drill, which is a checklist, so the executive, if they follow it absolutely to the T, can be done in five minutes. And they kind of get on LinkedIn. They do some housekeeping of their own. They like a few things that came their way in one of their groups or what have you, and they're min and out. They've left a footprint in the LinkedIn sands of time. I said, okay, if you want to do it more than that, do five minutes at the end of the day. What they wanted was a structured way to not live, use it like I do kind of day in and day out, and just say, okay, been there. 

 33:11
Joe
I've raised the flag, and I'm there. I've had a couple of people call up and say, look, you just sold me some BS on this five minute thing. And I said, no. I said, Are you taking the checklist and are you executing it? I said, look, you got to do it for two weeks. I said, don't go off anywhere outside the checklist. I mean, Facebook and LinkedIn, all those social medias that way. This guy interesting over here. No, can't do that. No, that's your time. The five minute drill is so that you do this. One guy said, look, after I did this 14 days, Joe, I have to call you and apologize, and I'm offering you a dinner because I. Was wrong. You can do it in five minutes. But you're right. You've got to stick to the plan. I said right. I mean, there's nothing to say that you can't spend 15 minutes if you want to. 

 34:13
Joe
What most people wanted, hey, I want to get in, get out, say I was there, leave my scent, and move on. The second half of the book just has what I call suggestions for what you need to do with your profile. There's lots of other resources in the back, other sources, as well as some PDF links to some sheets to checklists, that kind of stuff. 

 34:46
Josh Wilson
Yeah. If someone's like, hey, listen, I know that I got to do some stuff, but I'd rather you just do it for me or do it with me. Do you guys offer those kind of services where people could call you up and have you walk them through that process? 

 34:59
Joe
Yeah. So what I do that. That's usually a to three hour process on the front end. First hour is take your head and turn it inside out. Second hour is, okay, here's the mechanics of LinkedIn, and this is what you need to do based on what we discussed was your mission. I'll give them, hey, here's three things that you can sprint on. I mean, you can do this in an hour, and the rest of it is a marathon and you need to sit down. Here's the structure. Go build the content. And then I help them with that. In other words, when they're building their content. Hey, Joe, you were talking about this the other day. I'm confused. I get on the phone and work with them, and so I see them through from start to finish. It's the old adage, you gotta do it. 

 36:07
Josh Wilson
For deal makers out there who want some help doing that, they're going to take a look at your book and connect with you. What's a good place for them to find you, connect with you, and do a deal with you. 

 36:17
Joe
The best place is LinkedIn. I get 500 emails a day, and I swear I spend most of my time on the delete button. So LinkedIn is the best way. I'm an open connector. In other words, you can send me a LinkedIn message without having been connected to me. So I'm open from that standpoint. 

 36:40
Josh Wilson
Super cool. Are there any questions during this interview that I should have asked you, that I screwed up and did not ask you? Joe? 

 36:47
Joe
I think the thing that I would say is with LinkedIn there is what I call the covert overt Nexus. Okay? Overt means, like, Josh does his part. He decides that he wants to look for a new opportunity or a new deal. Call it what you make. The overt part is where he's out there clicking on Google, looking at LinkedIn, doing whatever he's going to do to find what he wants. That's overt. What most people miss out is the covert part. The covert part is, hey, build a worldclass LinkedIn profile that fully describes everything you bring to the table. I'm talking about everything you bring to the table since high school forward. I mean, I get a lot of questions. I know that I can sell a guy easier if I can tell the person that he worked in high school and that he had some fiscal responsibility. 

 38:10
Joe
Okay. I just found that's an easier sell. A lot of people say they were an Eagles Scout, and they don't put that on their LinkedIn profile. I get requirements to hey, Joe. They won't ever put it in writing. But Joe, I was an Eagle Scout. So what's the guy telling me? The Girl Scout equivalent or the Boy Scout equivalent? 

 38:34
Josh Wilson
Heath. 

 38:37
Joe
I'm not stupid. 

 38:40
Josh Wilson
Well, I think this is such an important thing when it comes to strategic networking and doing deals and building a deal ecosystem and building relationships with people is this tends to happen. Not always. Birds of a feather flock together, right? It's this I have a natural affinity towards people who have a similar story or background. Like, our similarities tend to bring us together and that we can look at things. The more you share, the more you're open with your experiences, success and failures. It attracts people who are similarminded belief systems, experience systems. Am I on the right page here? 

 39:20
Joe
Yeah. For example, one of my volunteer activities is I give blood, right? Every time I give blood, I put a one sentence entry min there because during COVID, they called me up a lot. One day I had the CEO contact me and I said, well, how did I'm live you? How did you find it? He san, Josh, you're a blood donor. The only place that is on my LinkedIn profile. It's not on Google. So he searched for blood donor. I said, well, why does that interest you? Say, Well, I have a child that requires frequent blood donations, and if I'm going to do business with somebody, I'm going to try to do business for somebody that supports my child. 

 40:09
Josh Wilson
Yeah, so good, man. I think, and this is maybe it was a part of my father's generation that I got trained in. I didn't want to overshare. I didn't want to share content or share my emotions, my feelings, my thoughts. What I'm realizing is and we have another few podcast shows, and one of them we talk really openly, and I find the more authentic and transparent I can be, I attract more people like me who I like. 

 40:42
Joe
Isn't it amazing? I've had people call me up and say, joe, hey, I see you're doing this, and I think I want to do that. I said, and how did you find me? I said, hey, you were an offensive center in high school football. Yeah, I was, too. 

 41:00
Josh Wilson
Super cool. Yeah. Awesome, man. So, Joe, really enjoyed our conversation once again, man. Love your history, love your story. Love what you're doing for people out there who want to connect with you, do a deal and get some help. What's one place that they could go to do that? 

 41:15
Joe
LinkedIn. Joe Frankie III. 

 41:18
Josh Wilson
Joe Frankie III. You heard it, guys. I'll put his LinkedIn link in the show notes. If you guys are listening and want to connect with him, as always, the mission and purpose of the show is to connect deals and deal makers and to find new things about deals and things that we might not be aware of, but it's to raise the deal making community and to build a really strong ecosystem. If you have a deal that you're working on and you want to talk about it, come talk about it here on the Deal Scout. It might be a good fit for someone out there in the audience. That's the deal, scout.com Fill out a quick forum, brands, maybe get you on the show next. Till then, we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Bye, guys.