AP 0489: How Do I Manage My Side Business in My LinkedIn Profile?

AskPat 489 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn, here, and welcome to Episode 489 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you all for the birthday wishes. My birthday is in a couple days, December sixth. I'm going to be 33, woot.

Three is my lucky number so this will be a good year, I think. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me and we have a great question today from Darren. Before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is Braintree. If you're looking to set up payments for your business, Braintree gives you, or your app, or website an amazing payment solution that accepts about pretty much every payment with one simple integration. Plus, they'll give you your first $50,000 in transaction fees free. To learn more, visit BraintreePayments.com/pat, again, that's braintreepayments.com/pat.

All righty, here's today's question from Darin.

Darin: Hi, Pat. This is Darin from Kids Double Desk. I have a question about social media, specifically, LinkedIn. Today, I still work my regular nine-to-five job and I have a LinkedIn profile tailored to that career with connections in that IT space. I am working to build a startup company in a completely different field. While there's no conflict of interest between what I do at my nine-to-five and the new company I'm trying to build, I do have a couple of concerns. One, I don't want people, especially my boss at my company, to think that my new startup is taking time away from my nine-to-five job. Two, the connections that I have on my current LinkedIn profile are probably not relevant to the audience that I want to build around my new company.

On the other hand, every lead is a lead, right? Just because my connections are techy people, doesn't mean that they don't have children who might enjoy my unique and exciting product that I'm building, right? Is it smart to walk away from those connections, or is it smart to build and tailor a new LinkedIn profile around my new company? I think that I need to build a new profile made especially for my startup. Once that page matures and I meet all of the requirements by LinkedIn, then I can create a company LinkedIn page. I would be really grateful to hear your thoughts on the topic. I hope to talk to you again real soon. Thank you so much and have a great day.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Darin. What's up? Thank you so much for the question. Now, I will say that I'm not a LinkedIn expert. There are probably a lot more people who are more active on LinkedIn and you're probably more active than I am. I'm just going to give you my own honest opinions and thoughts about this. If anybody else out there who's listening has any thoughts about this, too, please use the hashtag on Twitter, #AskPat489, for Episode 489, so we can help out Darin continue the conversation off of this show and on Twitter so we can follow that conversation there. #AskPat489, if you have anything to say. There's no conflict between your nine-to-five in this start up you're building. How do you convince your boss that your performance is not suffering? I think you just have to show him that it's not suffering.

What I would do, I mean this is … where I come from, it's just honesty and being the first to come up with these things before somebody else does, is what my philosophy is. If there's going to be a problem, I want to be the first one to mention it or share that there's something going on before somebody else finds out. Not that there's going to be a problem, but if there's something going on that I feel somebody else would need to know, I want to be the first one to tell them before somebody else tells me. In this case, if I were in your shoes, this is what I would do: I would go to my boss and I'd have a sit down, maybe coffee, whatever, I don't know if that's even legit these days to ask your boss out for coffee.

Anyway, tell him about what you're doing and all of the great things you're doing to serve the company and any ideas you have, really sharing how much value you're providing, what you're doing, what's your performance is. Hopefully, your performance is great, in which case this person would agree, and all of those sorts of things. You could even step it up a notch and come up with plans or do what Noah Kagan did and create some sort of marketing report out of nowhere that is just totally helpful. All of those sorts of things, just sharing how much value you add to this company already and all that you're planning to do.

Then, I would also talk about, well, you have this side thing that you're very passionate about and I've seen what you do; KidsDoubleDesk.com is awesome. I recommend everybody check it out. Darin and I had a conversation a long time ago when he was asking me about the start up. It's cool to hear that you're here on AskPat and asking questions about it. That's KidsDoubleDesk.com, something that my kids could probably use for sure. Anyway, I would talk about, does your boss have one of these? You could even let him in on one or share with him the process of what you're doing and how exciting this is to you. Again, reiterating the fact that you are doing this secondary to the nine-to-five job that's most important. That's where I would come from. That's what I would do. Be totally up front and honest about it and just make sure that your performance doesn't suffer. That's would I would do. What does everybody else think? #AskPat489. Let me know what you think.

Now, the LinkedIn stuff. Again, I'm not a LinkedIn expert, but I would just keep that all on one page because you are an employee of that company, but you are also somebody who is working on this thing. I think it's totally cool for somebody to see that you have this other thing going on, and when people discover it, yes, a lead is just a lead, but I wouldn't even necessarily think of those people who are following you on LinkedIn as leads. They're just people and people are interested in what people do, no matter what it is that they do. If they come to your profile for one reason, but they see something else that interests them, that's fine. I don't think you need to worry about setting up a completely new profile. This is you, Darin. This is who you are and what you work on. You want that to be your reflection of just everything you're interested in, and what you're doing, and your talents, and all those sorts of things.

It would be more weird to me if I was searching for you and I found you in two locations. I was like, “Oh, well here's Darin Ward. Here's picture of him and he's working for this company, but here's another Darin Ward. The same picture of him, but it's for this other company. What are his priorities? What is he doing?” That would be more confusing to me. Also, the business LinkedIn profile, I think, is important. That's something you could set up for your startup, too, at some point. I would just have it all on one page. Don't be afraid to be who you are, is really what I would say. Darin, I hope that answers your question. That's where I'm coming from. Again, I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but it feels like it's the right thing to do for me, if I were in your shoes.

Again, love to hear what everybody else things. Use the #AskPat489. What would you do? Would you tell your boss or would you kind of keep it on the side and separate? There's, obviously, no conflict. I don't see there to be any sort of problem. That's where I'm coming from. Darin, thank you so much for the question. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I, also, would love to encourage everybody else out there that has a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Just hit the record button. I'd also just like to ask you all really quick, if you'd like to do me a quick birthday favor, my birthday's coming up on the sixth, like I said, which is this coming Sunday if you're listening to this on the Friday that this comes out. If you'd like to do me a quick favor, please head on over to iTunes and leave your honest review for AskPat. Just look up AskPat in iTunes. I don't ask this very much and it is my birthday, so I'm asking you now because for whatever reason, AskPat doesn't get a lot of reviews. It would really help out and that would be awesome. Thank you for that.

Also, WillItFlyBook.com. Check that out. That's all I'm going to say about that. I'll let you discover what that's about. Again, WillItFlyBook.com. Check that out. Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Here's a quote to finish off the day by Mari Smith. She's awesome and she said, “We must develop a thick skin. With an unshakeable sense of self and a commitment to being compassionate nothing will faze you.” Take care guys. Thanks so much and again, thanks for all the birthday wishes. Appreciate it. Bye.