Month: February 2023

Growth

A Thanksgiving Message About Community

Post author By Katherine Sellery
Post date February 16, 2023

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!

Parenthood gives us so much to be grateful for every day—even in its most challenging moments. Feeling gratitude is important, especially at this time of year. But at Thanksgiving, I find myself thinking about another core value that ties into this holiday. . .

Community.

Thanksgiving is a celebration of our communities, familial or otherwise. We gather to share food and enjoy each other’s company. It’s one of the few holidays that isn’t centered around gifts or greeting cards. Instead, it’s all about togetherness—and, yes, eating yourself into a post-dinner food coma. 😉

As a parent, the concept of community means so much to me. The old saying we’ve all heard holds so much truth: it takes a village to raise a child.

Building a supportive community is key to conscious parenting. You need people you can rely on who understand your parenting goals and have your children’s best interests in mind.

That’s why we started the Conscious Parenting Revolution Facebook group. In this space, you have the opportunity to meet and interact with like-minded parents who support each other in raising independent, responsible, well-adjusted children.

But community isn’t just important for parents. It’s important for children, too.

Raising your children to build their own community is vital to their success in life.

Community-building begins earlier than you might think. Your child finds a buddy to share crayons with on the first day of kindergarten; they join the local t-ball team. The communities children build for themselves in these formative years have an enormous impact on the kind of people they grow up to be.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Whoa, Katherine! That sounds like a lot of pressure.”

It doesn’t have to be.

As a conscious parent, you have the tools to help your children build healthy communities that will fulfill and support them as they grow older. . .

When you encourage your child to advocate for their needs, you help them find friends and support systems that can take care of them.

When you build a foundation of trust with your child, you show them how a loving relationship looks and feels so they can seek that out in their other relationships.

When you encourage your child to be independent, you teach them how to establish and maintain healthy boundaries.

The little things add up. Trust your gut, and as we navigate this holiday season, remember to demonstrate the value of strong communities to your children. They learn best by example!

Love and Blessings,

Katherine

P.S. Don’t get lost in the image you expect your child to be. Remember to be thankful for who your child is, not who you want them to be. For more on this, check out my tips on The Motherside ABC7 – and don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel so you don’t miss out on any other parenting hacks! Happy Thanksgiving!

5 Mindfulness techniques you can use with your kids

Post author By Katherine Sellery
Post date February 16, 2023

What is mindfulness? If it’s something you have never tried before, it’s a way of focusing your awareness on the present moment. And at the same time, you calmly acknowledge and accept your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. It’s used as a therapeutic technique. So right now, it’s something that can really help you stay calm as we deal with all the uncertainty around us.

Mindfulness has lots of amazing benefits. From decreasing your stress to improving your mood. It can also help with emotional regulation. And that’s not just for adults. Your child can experience these benefits, as well. However, you are no doubt thinking, ‘Get my kids to sit down and meditate? Are you crazy?’ Well, there are ways you can help your children be mindful. You just have to make it fun.

While your kids don’t have the same stresses as adults, they often don’t connect with their feelings. With all the activities they do and the time they spend on their phones and tablets, they are often mindlessly going through the day. This means the only time they are checking in with themselves is when they have a tantrum or meltdown. And that leads to you being even more stressed out than you were before.

Mindfulness can help your children check in with their emotions and recognize them. Research shows that practicing mindfulness with children helps them increase their focus, decrease stress and anxiety, and can enable positive prosocial behavior. It can also be a great way to connect with your child and find a moment of tranquility. And they can be few and far between right now.

Here are five great ways you can introduce mindfulness to your children. And you will both reap the rewards.

5 Easy Mindfulness Techniques For Your Kids

Breathing exercise

Meditation is essentially about sitting down and focusing on your own breath. What does it feel and sound like? Now your child might struggle with sitting still for longer than a matter of seconds. How do you combat that? You can use colorful pillows and play some soft music to create an atmosphere of calm and love. This will also get them interested. You can ask them to pretend they can smell something really nice, like flowers or a cake. As they take a deep breath in, they can then pretend to blow out candles or a ‘dandelion clock’ as they breathe out. Ask your child to think about their tummy rising and falling. Start by keeping it short, aim for 10. Then you can increase the time.

Notice 5 things around you

When you consciously notice the world around you, it can help bring you back to the present. This is very helpful when you are feeling overwhelmed by stress or emotion. Noticing five things you can see brings you back to the present.

You can turn this into a game for your kids. Sit down with your child wherever you are and explain you want to play the “notice five things” game. Then you call out five things you can see around you, and ask your child to try it too. Then you can explain this can help if they are ever feeling upset. You can also try saying, noticing five things you can hear.

This game brings your child back to the now. It works really effectively if your kids are already relaxed and ready to learn. With regular practice, your child will soon be calling on this tool to help with stress or losing control.

Encourage your child to embrace all their feelings

No matter how hard you try to keep your children calm, they w

ill, at some point, throw a tantrum. Mindfulness can enable them to learn how to accept their feelings without judgement. As a parent, you need to set an example in this.

Of course, if your child is in the middle of the grocery store screaming blue murder, you are just as upset as they are. So easier said than done. But if you try and see past their behavior, acknowledge your reaction, take some deep breaths yourself, that is the first step to calming everything down.=

Don’t try and get them to do meditative breathing while they are throwing a hissy fit. This will not go down well! And it won’t work. Instead, wait until they have calmed down a little. Then talk to them about their feelings, and the unmet needs behind those feelings. You can then do some breathing and discuss how you can both look at solutions for dealing with it the next time. And there will be more than likely, next time!

Drop anchor

In this exercise, you stand across from your child. Stand with your feet firmly on the floor around shoulder-width apart, and show them how to do it. Then demonstrate how to push down through your feet so you can feel the ground steady beneath you. Ask, ‘How do your leg muscles feel when you push down?’

Then ask your child to tune in to different parts of their body

, starting with the head. Ask, “How does it feel?’ You work down through the whole body so your child can feel the weight of gravity connecting them to the earth.

Once you have done that together, ask what they can notice around them. This is essentially a way of linking back to the earth around you and feeling more grounded in the present.

Silence game

The silence game has been practiced in Montessori classrooms around the world for many years. This mindfulness practice asks children to be as quiet as they can. And it’s not just with their voices, it’s with their bodies as well. It’s good to aim for a minute, to begin with, asking kids to be as quiet and still as they can.

When the game ends, speak in a soft voice and ask your kids what they heard or saw while they experienced the quiet. Then ask them to keep that calm, peaceful feeling during their next activity, and if they can for the rest of the day.

In conclusion, these simple games and activities are an excellent way for you and your child to connect differently. They will help them build tools to center themselves when they feel stressed or out of sorts.

Mindfulness is a way you and your child can experience calm to

gether. It will also alleviate those feelings of nervousness and anxiety, which we are all dealing with during the coronavirus.

Don’t approach mindfulness with too many expectations. This means you’re living in the future, and mindfulness is about the present.

But if you encourage your child to embrace these methods, they will also start learning the necessary tools to self-regulate. If you practice regularly, your kids will feel happier and more peaceful. And so will you.

Love and Blessings,

Katherine Sellery

PS: It’s a crazy time of year – the overstimulation, the weather changes, the time off from school. Read my entry on how to introduce structure to your children’s life if you are dealing with chaos. Click on the link here now.

Growth Technology

First Female CTO Of The U.S. Megan Smith Hopes Tech’s History Can Repeat Itself

Post author By C-Suite Network Concierge
Post date February 16, 2023

Author: Jenna Arnold / Source: Forbes

Megan Smith addressing a gathering of residents of Cheyenne, WY to discuss job opportunities in tech.

American talent is ubiquitous, with entrepreneurial wunderkinds as likely to be born in our heartlands as on our coasts. The problem has been that we’ve done a really unequal job of scouting and scaling it. There are 6 million young people not in school or working, 12 million experienced skilled workers who need to re-train, and 1.5 million veterans who are unemployed or reentering the civilian workforce, all at a time when we have 500,000 open American tech and programming jobs. This matters for more than just the tech sector; who fills these jobs will dictate who sits at the table for many of our key cultural and political decisions over the next generation. Enter Megan Smith and the Tech Jobs Tour. Smith is a former Vice President at Google and the 3^rd and first female Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Despite her ever-changing and ever-more-impressive titles, Smith would be the first to tell you she has the same job now she’s always had: evangelist. To watch her work a room is magic, instilling in anyone within earshot both that technology is a large part of our future and that there are no barriers to participation.

Most central to her message, however, is the key insight that is most often lost: not only is inclusivity a part of technology’s future, it was also a seminal part of its past. Ada Lovelace, for example, an English woman born in 1812, was the first computer programmer; Katherine G. Johnson, an African-American woman featured in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, helped put NASA astronauts on the moon and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015; Grace Hopper invented coding itself; in President Obama’s words: “If Edison is light and Wright is flight, Hopper is code”.

History books often overlook and under-tell these stories, opting instead to lionize male inventors; for all the stereotypes of the “brogrammer,” we forget that technology – like most things – was birthed by remarkable women. They forgot to teach you all this in 11^th grade. As Smith tells it: “So much of my work…

Click here to read more

Growth Health and Wellness Leadership Parenting Personal Development

5 Steps to Ace the School Year

Post author By Katherine Sellery
Post date February 16, 2023

If you’re a parent or caregiver to a school-aged kid, chances are you’ve found yourself learning grammar or long division again — and sometimes, the teacher is on Zoom. And you’re fighting with the technology of uploading your child’s digital work. And trying to run a household. And maybe attempting to work yourself.

While it’s not easy to juggle all those priorities, it’s possible to make the experience a little better for both you and your kids.

The expectations around school and the pressure parents put on their kids can create a lot of stress. Whether your child is co-working with you at the living room table or back in the classroom, these 5 tips will help you both ace the semester:

Discover your child’s learning style.

Some kids find it easy to work independently while others need activity and collaboration. Find out which learning styles your child responds to best and help shape their experiences accordingly. Independent thinker? Give them time and space to study and work on their own. Collaborative mind? Encourage them to schedule more Zoom sessions with their classmates. Catering to their unique style will help your kid have a more positive experience.
Encourage their hobbies.

Who says education has to be by the book? Let your kids explore and expand their non-academic skills, like cooking, baking, drawing, or dancing. These skills are just as important as geometry or social studies. What matters is that they find ways to become engaged with something they care about. Their hobbies may change over time, but the ability to dig into an area of interest has lifelong benefits.
9Use the resources available.

Look around you: you have a wealth of educational resources online and in your neighborhood. Coordinate a book swap with a classmate or neighbor. Hold biology class outside to look for real-life examples of the concepts your child is learning. Sign up for online guitar lessons (Youtube can teach you to do just about anything these days). Let your own creativity expand the options beyond the school’s lesson plan and the oh-so-many online worksheets.

4. Design a schedule for learning.

Children thrive with some structure in place — adults, too! It’s important that children have a dedicated time and place for school activities. Work with your child to develop their own little study nook in the house, and help them identify the best time for activities like homework and studying. While they may not be able to dictate their entire schedule, your child should definitely have input in this process.

5. Don’t focus on the grades.

Try not to be overly preoccupied with your child’s grades, especially during this wild and crazy year. Becoming too grade obsessed can give a kid the impression that their confidence or self-worth should be tied to competency. We have to constantly remind our children that love is not something they have to earn or acquire by doing well in school or being a “perfect” human. We are worthy of love and belonging simply because we’re alive and breathing. Work to be more forgiving if your child scores lower than expected on a test. And forgive yourself if you feel like a less than perfect teacher. Our children’s achievements are not a reflection of us!

One thing is certain: the school-from-home era has been a learning experience for all of us. Learning always means growth, which gives you and your child the opportunity to deepen your relationship and come together as a team. Besides, not everyone gets a chance to relive their school days. 🙂

If you and your child struggle to talk about school, my free ebook may help. I wrote 7 Strategies to Keep Your Relationship With Your Kids from Hitting the Boiling Point to give every parent the tools they need to improve their communication with their child, especially around hot-button issues like homework and grades. Grab your copy today.

Love and Blessings,

Katherine

Personal Development Real Estate

Busting the “bad kid” myth once and for all

Post author By C-Suite Network Concierge
Post date February 16, 2023

What’s wrong with these statements?

Spare the rod and spoil the elderly.

Millenials should be seen and not heard.

New Zealanders have got to learn.

If you’re cringing right now, it’s because you know that these statements are unfairly biased and even prejudiced. So why are we okay with using these same phrases to describe our children?

In my TEDx talk, “The Rebellion is Here—We Created it, We Can Solve It,” I deconstruct the generational misconception that children, because of their youth and impressionability, should not be trusted. Subscribing to the belief that kids’ opinions should not be taken seriously leads to disconnection and a lack of trust between parent and child.

When we punish a kid for talking back, what we’re really saying is that their inner voice or feelings are irrelevant. And punishing surface behavior without addressing unmet needs often leads to what Gordon referred to as the Three R’s: Retaliation, Rebellion, and Resentment.

Do you want to build an environment where your child feels like they can tell you the truth 100% of the time? Do you want to teach them that they should never stand down in the face of prejudice, injustice—or even being told by an adult to do something they’re uncomfortable with?

3 Strategies to Let Go of Past Mistakes and Move Forward

Watch my TEDx talk for tips on how to communicate effectively and compassionately with your children, especially when they seem to be acting up. Let them know that they’re not “bad kids” for speaking up.

Love and Blessings,

Katherine

P.S. Ready to move on from outdated ideas about how children “should” behave? Join our private Facebook group to find a community of parents just like you!

Growth Personal Development

6 tips for transforming power struggles into parent-child collaborations

Post author By Katherine Sellery
Post date February 16, 2023

Hello, Conscious Parent! Welcome to “Dear Katherine,” a Q&A with real-life parents/caregivers. If you’d like to submit a question of your own, email me at katherine@consciousparentingrevolution.com.

Dear Katherine,

I am a mother to a lovely, zany, strong-willed 8-year-old girl. I love her to smithereens, but sometimes it feels like we’re in a constant power struggle. Last weekend she wanted to wear a bathing suit to church. Today, she refused to wear a coat—in the middle of winter! I value her firm sense of self and the vitality of her character, but I don’t want to be caught in a cycle of push and pull. What do I do?

Love,

The Struggle is Real

Dear The Struggle is Real,

First, I want to congratulate you on raising such an amazing little girl! A strong-willed child isn’t a “bad” child, but a unique person with special gifts and talents. Their innate sense of self-direction and motivation positions them to become amazing leaders. They’re often vibrant and passionate free-thinkers who aren’t easily deterred by outside pressures.

I, too, have a strong-willed child. My daughter Pia had (and shared!) opinions very early on and I had to learn how to effectively communicate with her and meet her needs.

The Struggle is Real, you wrote that you value your daughter’s vitality and sense of self. That’s wonderful! As parents, it’s our responsibility to encourage a strong will, not break it. You can empower your child’s identity and still keep the peace.

Here are 6 tips for transforming power struggles into parent-child collaborations:

Encourage independent learning.

Known for being spirited and brave, strong-willed children learn by experience. She wants to ride a bike without your help? Let her. She decided to cut her teddy bear open and sew it back together? Tell her to go for it. (She may cry later, but you’ll be there to comfort her.) As long as she’s not in any real danger, give her the space to test her limits. She’ll be all the wiser for it.
Teach self-direction.

If there’s one thing strong-willed children crave, it’s being in charge of themselves. Take this opportunity to teach healthy autonomy. Ask her to create her own daily schedule, plotting out blocks of time for activities like school, play, and sleep. Strong-willed kids are quite collaborative when given the freedom to express themselves.
Give choices, not ultimatums.

If your daughter is anything like mine, she probably hates submitting to a parent’s will just because they said so. Explain to her why she can’t wear her swimsuit to church (swimsuits are for swimming), then give her the choice to pick out another outfit. You can even compromise by allowing her to wear the swimsuit underneath a dress.

Set routines.

Most strong-willed kids need to be able to predict what happens next. Setting regular routines helps them know what to expect. Collaborate with everyone though so that each person’s feelings and needs are considered when creating the routines and you will save yourself a lot of agony. If others are included in the conversation, then you have avoided all the power struggles because they were a part of the decision making process. No more trying to sneak in another hour of screentime!

Practice positive communication.

Instead of yelling back when your child is throwing a tantrum (I know it’s tempting), take a deep breath and give them time to wind down before you engage. When everyone’s calmer, ask your child if she can reframe what she needs to say in a more considerate way.

Listen.

When a child violently opposes a sim p le request (e.g. to take a bath), there’s usually a deeper reason why. Sit down and ask her what’s really bothering her. The art is to do that without asking too many questions but really listening. Listening allows you to sense into what the problem is “behind the problem.” “Seems like something is bothering you” will get you further than a more direct “What is wrong with you?” Finding the real cause of conflict will help you address it at its core.

The Struggle is Real, when your strong-willed child is “acting up,” that’s when she needs you the most. Let her know that power struggles are unnecessary because you’ve got her back and have her best interests at heart. When it’s clear to her that you value her identity just as much as she does, your strong-willed girl will become your best ally. 😉

Love and Blessings,

Katherine

PS. Have you received your free copy of my #1 Amazon Bestselling book? Check out freeparentingbook.com to claim yours!

Books Growth Personal Development

Strategic Engagement on LinkedIn: How to Become Top of Mind for Right-for-You Opportunities

Post author By Carol Kaemmerer
Post date February 14, 2023

The more you engage on your LinkedIn homepage, the more you’ll be top of mind for opportunities that are ideal for you. When you are consistently active on LinkedIn, you’ll show up in more LinkedIn searches, too. In this month’s article, I share some strategic principles to power your online engagement.

Consistently engaging online is key to becoming top of mind.Develop a cadence that you can keep (daily is best, but if you can manage only once a week, start there). Because it is easier to comment on what others post than it is to initiate a post yourself, ramp up your practice of engaging on LinkedIn by responding to posts that you find particularly interesting or thought-provoking.
Use tagging whenever you mention a person or company. When you do so, LinkedIn notifies the person or company you’ve tagged via email. This ensures that your efforts will be noticed. To form a tag on LinkedIn, use the “@” symbol followed by the name you want to mention. Start typing the name and finish by selecting the correct name from the drop-down options that will appear.
Pay attention to what your customers, clients, and colleagues post. Everyone enjoys attention. Responding to a person’s posts is a way to nurture a relationship. Amplify the posts that come from your company’s communications department. Find people whose posts consistently are thought provoking and worthy. Every response you make creates insight for others into your personal brand. When you start paying attention to specific people consistently, LinkedIn will reward you by making sure that their posts show up more often in your LinkedIn feed and notifications.
When you respond to a post, you add value three ways. You add value to the original person who posted, value to other people that read your comment, and value to yourself. Your LIKE and COMMENT should be thoughtful; it should be the beginning of a conversation between you and the original poster and potentially other readers as well. It takes some time to craft a worthy response, but since every response is a reflection of your personal brand, it’s worth it.
But know that not all responses are created equal. A LIKE by itself is a very small token of appreciation and will generally not get a response from the person who posted. (This includes all “flavors” of LIKE: celebration, support, love, insightful, curious.) In contrast, a LIKE and a COMMENT are more likely to get you noticed. But, comments of fewer than five words are not acknowledged by the LinkedIn algorithm. That means that comments such as “Great article!”, “You go girl!”, and “Congratulations” will NOT result in the post lasting any longer on the homepage feed than if the post had not received those comments.
Never respond on the homepage to material that makes you uncomfortable in any way (i.e., material that is sexist, racist, etc., etc.) If you do respond, you will be sharing that material and uncomfortable feeling with others. Take action instead: click the three dots in the upper right corner to report the post to LinkedIn.
When you have mastered the art of responding thoughtfully to others’ posts, you’re ready to craft your own posts, too. You might curate an article written by someone else or share your own thoughts (in 1,300 characters or fewer). Looking to share at length? Write an article on LinkedIn – but please, only do this if you write well. Everything you post and write online represents your brand and is retrievable into the future.

When you consistently and thoughtfully engage on LinkedIn, people will notice. You will begin to create a network of existing and new friends on LinkedIn. And since every response you make on LinkedIn represents your personal brand, people will begin to associate you with what you do – and recall your name when right-for-you opportunities arise. Being active consistently is a practice I recommend to all my clients.

Named one of six top branding experts in 2022 by The American Reporter, over the past ten years, I’ve helped countless C-level clients use LinkedIn to frame conversations, impress suitors and customers, and introduce themselves before their first conversation takes place. If you are a C-suite executive or senior leader, I can make this easy for you. Based on my knowledge of how LinkedIn works and how people respond to what they see there, I can ensure everything is ready and your profile conveys exactly the message and impression you’re aiming for. Let me help you attract the talent you want to hire, increase your visibility and influence, and steer your career.

Contact me through my website https://carolkaemmerer.com for:

Executive one-on-one assistance with your online brand
Professional speaking engagements on personal brand and LinkedIn
An autographed copy of my book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^ndEdition
My self-paced, online course
To receive my articles in your email mailbox monthly

For your author-inscribed and signed book or for quantity discounts, order at: https://carolkaemmerer.com/books

My award-winning book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^nd Edition received BookAuthority’s “Best LinkedIn Books of All Time” award, and was named one of the “Top 100+ Best Business Books” by The C-Suite Network, and is an International Book Awards winner. For your author-inscribed and signed book or for quantity discounts, order at: https://carolkaemmerer.com/books

Books Growth Personal Development

Your Most Powerful 220 Characters: If You Haven’t Customized Your LinkedIn Headline, You’re Missing Out

Post author By Carol Kaemmerer
Post date February 14, 2023

Your Most Powerful 220 Characters:

If You Haven’t Customized Your LinkedIn Headline, You’re Missing Out

Your LinkedIn headline is the text that appears right below your name on your profile. Unless you’ve customized what it says, LinkedIn fills it for you with your current job title and the name of your company. But they also allow you to customize what it says, providing space for 220 characters for you to do so. Your headline is important! It is the first text people will see associated with your name and it is the first section of the profile that the LinkedIn algorithm searches to see if your profile matches a searcher’s keywords.

Because I have two speaking engagements with attorney audiences coming up, I’ve taken a morning to research how attorneys who practice in the areas of family law and intellectual property have used the Headline section. Of the 50 profiles I perused in each of these categories, about 90% of them had auto-filled headlines, providing a significant advantage for the attorneys who instead customized their headlines.

In this article, using these two areas of law practice, I share how to write a headline that will bring more of the right kinds of clients to your door while discouraging clients whose issues don’t align with your expertise from knocking. Readers who are not attorneys are still encouraged to read on. The formula for writing a stellar headline is similar for everyone.

The Formula for a Powerful Headline:

The first part of the headline is your job title, area of practice (e.g., Managing Partner, Intellectual Property Law), and optionally (for an attorney) the name of the law firm. If your firm is prestigious and has high name recognition, you would want to use it. (If you are not an attorney the first part of your headline is your job title or functional area, with or without the name of your company.)

The second part of the headline is your business story. Tell us who you serve, what you do for them and how you add value.

The character count of the two parts together cannot exceed 220 characters, but that is usually not hard to manage.

Examples:

In the area of family law, the most common (and not outstanding) headline is Family Law Attorney and the name of the firm. In contrast, here are two headlines that I wrote for family law attorneys using the formula above:

A — Partner, Family Law Attorney and Mediator at [name of firm]: Crafting solutions rather than obstacles to help families live their best lives as they transition through divorce or other family changes.

B — Partner and Family Law Attorney at [name of firm]: Focusing on complex cases involving high marital assets, the valuation of businesses and professional practices, spousal maintenance, and parenting issues.

Both attorneys represented here practice family law, but their ideal clients are different and their practice philosophy differs as well. Both have excellent reputations and high ethical standards, but, which attorney would you consult if you and your spouse want to end your marriage amicably, quickly and at a comparatively low cost? Which attorney would be your choice if you had amassed significant wealth that would be in dispute in a divorce? Telling people in your LinkedIn headline about what you do and for whom you do it gets the right people to your door much more efficiently than if your headline is the generic “Family Business Attorney.” Your time is valuable! The time you take to customize your headline will be more than repaid by the time you save not having to address approaches from clients who turn out to be inappropriate for your practice. (Non-attorneys, specificity in your own headline will work in these ways for you, too.)

In the area of intellectual property, the most common (and not distinctive) headline is Intellectual Property Attorney and the name of the firm. Here are two headlines that I wrote for intellectual property attorneys using the formula above:

C — Intellectual Property Attorney at [name of firm]: Helping small and mid-sized companies monetize, protect, and enforce their intellectual property to protect their inventions and advance their business goals.

D — Intellectual Property Attorney at [name of firm]: Focusing on complex patent, trademark, trade secret, and technology disputes in plastic formulation and processing, food processing and packaging.

People are adept at using search engines, including LinkedIn. When your LinkedIn headline is specific regarding who and how you serve, right-for-you clients will find you and prospective clients whose issues don’t align with your areas of expertise and service will keep on looking. With an auto-filled headline, you are missing a huge opportunity to attract people whose needs align with your services.

speaker holding microphone Named one of six top branding experts in 2022 by The American Reporter, over the past ten years, I’ve helped countless C-level clients use LinkedIn to frame conversations, impress suitors and customers, and introduce themselves before their first conversation takes place. If you are a C-suite executive or senior leader, I can make this easy for you. Based on my knowledge of how LinkedIn works and how people respond to what they see there, I can ensure everything is ready and your profile conveys exactly the message and impression you’re aiming for. Let me help you attract the talent you want to hire, increase your visibility and influence, and steer your career.

Contact me through my website https://carolkaemmerer.com for:

Executive one-on-one assistance with your online brand
Professional speaking engagements on personal brand and LinkedIn
An autographed copy of my book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^ndEdition
My self-paced, online course
To receive my articles in your email mailbox monthly

My award-winning book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^nd Edition received Book Authority’s “Best LinkedIn Books of All Time” award, and was named one of the “Top 100+ Best Business Books” by The C-Suite Network, and is an International Book Awards winner.

For your author-inscribed and signed book or for quantity discounts, order at: https://carolkaemmerer.com/books

What Can a Sales Conversation Teach You About How to Write Your LinkedIn ABOUT Section?

Post author By Carol Kaemmerer
Post date February 14, 2023

What Can a Sales Conversation Teach You About How to Write Your LinkedIn ABOUT Section?

The image that leads this article was part of Mimi Brown’s presentation at the National Speakers Association INFLUENCE conference in July 2022 on ways for speakers to increase their sales. The point Brown made is that so many sales conversations start right off with the details of our products and services. That, says Brown, is a fatal flaw that dooms most sales conversations from the beginning. What she says the customer wants to know first is who you are and whether they can know, like and trust you enough to want to buy anything from you. Only when they “buy YOU” will they be interested in knowing about your products and services.

Brown is onto something here. Her point is consistent with how I coach, speak and teach about writing your narrative on LinkedIn: your LinkedIn ABOUT section should be about YOU – not about your company or its products and services. Of course your company and its products or services are important, but the place for that is in your Experience section under your current position. The ABOUT section should be all about YOU because you need to establish your personal credibility and the know, like and trust factors that are critical to all sales.

“I’m not IN sales,” you say? The principle still applies. Whether you’d like to be deemed worthy of promotion, you’re looking for other businesses to partner with, or you’re searching for a new job, people need to know more about you before they are interested in taking the next step with you.

So how do you go about writing a great ABOUT section that is actually about YOU? This section is a maximum of 2,600 characters and spaces, equivalent to around 4 to 5 paragraphs – and the most compelling ABOUT sections will be approximately this long. When we write about ourselves we will naturally use our keywords in context, and that helps LI’s search algorithm find us. People are interested in more than surface information about you; they can see in other areas of your profile your job titles, companies you’ve worked for, and education, so a chronological bio is not necessary. They want to know what makes you tick. Because you will do best by communicating as though you are speaking to a new business acquaintance, I recommend that you write this section in the first person. Yes, you get to use “I” here.

For your ABOUT section to be powerful, start with introspection and planning. Begin your personal brainstorming with these questions:

What is my PURPOSE (my WHY)?
What is my business passion?
What are my principles?
What are my differentiators?
What three things do I want to be known for in the business world?
Is there a thread that unifies my career that might not be apparent to others that I should point out?

Now consider how you will use each of your paragraphs to address these items. Write an outline, then begin filling it in.

If all this sounds beyond you, and you are a candidate for executive branding services, I can help. But, if you will be writing for yourself, remember these basics:

Your ABOUT section should focus on YOU
You have 2,600 characters to work with

Tell us something more about yourself that we can’t intuit by looking at the rest of your profile so that we can know, like and trust you
To your success!
Named one of six top branding experts in 2022 by The American Reporter, over the past ten years, I’ve helped countless C-level clients use LinkedIn to frame conversations, impress suitors and customers, and introduce themselves before their first conversation takes place. If you are a C-suite executive or senior leader, I can make this easy for you. Based on my knowledge of how LinkedIn works and how people respond to what they see there, I can ensure everything is ready and your profile conveys exactly the message and impression you’re aiming for. Let me help you attract the talent you want to hire, increase your visibility and influence, and steer your career.

Contact me through my website https://carolkaemmerer.com for:

Executive one-on-one assistance with your online brand
Professional speaking engagements on personal brand and LinkedIn
An autographed copy of my book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^ndEdition
My self-paced, online course
To receive my articles in your email mailbox monthly

My award-winning book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^nd Edition received Book Authority’s “Best LinkedIn Books of All Time” award, and was named one of the “Top 100+ Best Business Books” by The C-Suite Network, and is an International Book Awards winner.

For your author-inscribed and signed book or for quantity discounts, order at: https://carolkaemmerer.com/books

Other Articles by Carol Kaemmerer

Your Most Powerful 220 Characters: If You Haven’t Customized Your LinkedIn Headline, You’re Missing Out

Strategic Engagement on LinkedIn: How to Become Top of Mind for Right-for-You Opportunities

Three Misconceptions About LinkedIn that Could Be Hurting You

What is a Personal Branding Expert? …And Do You Need One?

Why Senior Leaders Need a Strong Brand NOW — And Why It’s In their Company’s Best Interest to See That They Get One

7 Ways to Elevate Your Online Brand So You Can Love Your LinkedIn Profile

What is a Personal Brand – And How Can You Take Charge of Yours?

Twelve Changes You Can Make in About an Hour to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile

Why Is My LinkedIn Profile Getting So Few Views?

How Can LinkedIn Be Part of Your Company’s Strategy for Responding to the Great Resignation?

Is Your LinkedIn Profile Missing the Mark?

Comfortable in Your Job? Uncomfortable Life Lessons to Safeguard Your Career

How to Be Found on LinkedIn: Ten Top Strategies to Rank Well on a LinkedIn Keyword Search

Why Are You Playing Small on LinkedIn?

If You’re Not “Writing to the Margins” on LinkedIn, You’re Missing Out

Don’t Be Hooked Through a Big Phish: Recognize and Avoid Phishing Scams on LinkedIn:

A Small Omission That Undermines Your Credibility on LinkedIn

“Tell Me More…” — On LinkedIn

What is Your Poor LinkedIn Profile Costing You?

C-Suite Executives: Stop Hiding Online

Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing

LinkedIn Is All About… [What?]

Post author By Carol Kaemmerer
Post date February 14, 2023

LinkedIn Is All About… [What?]

The large number of LinkedIn connection requests coming to me from people who promise to generate leads for me suggests that they think LinkedIn is all about leads. But from my perspective, most business owners already have sufficient leads. What they may lack is sufficient customers.

The problem, converting leads to into buyers, is actually one LinkedIn is well positioned to solve. That’s because LinkedIn is all about relationships.

LinkedIn Is All About RELATIONSHIPS

I can hear the pushback now. “What?! I have thousands of connections on LinkedIn but very few relationships.”

I grant that is true for most of us. But the infrastructure and the tools available through LinkedIn can be used to move someone along from awareness to a sense of camaraderie – and perhaps eventually toward an interest in our services or products. Nothing happens without your commitment to make it so, however. Cultivating relationships requires an investment of your time and attention. It doesn’t happen through automatic canned messages and responses.

Cultivating Relationships

Starting out on the right foot

It’s hard to cultivate a relationship with someone to whom you haven’t yet bothered to say hello. If you send me a robo connection request (i.e. a request without personalization), how interested will I be in getting to know you? I may accept your connection request merely because your profile doesn’t alarm me and your connections will expand my network, but I’m not likely to spend time interacting with you.

Going the other way, if I ask you to connect with me but fail to follow up with any message after you accept, it’s hard to imagine that I’ve built the foundation for friendship. You should greet your new connections authentically and invite a response by asking a question.

Is it essential that we exchange niceties with each connection? No. Only with the people who really interest us — the people whose profile, job title, or something else about them catches our eye and resonates with us. Forming relationships should be a joyous endeavor, not drudgery.

Don’t sell

Selling in our connection invitation or right after we connect is not a winning proposition. There is no bigger turnoff than pushy sales talk without a prior relationship. Never assume that because someone has accepted your invitation to connect that they’ve agreed to be sold to. Sales and referrals flow when you are top of mind, you have demonstrated value over time, and your connection either experiences a problem that is perfect for you to solve or they know someone who they think needs what you are offering.

Relation-building strategies

Engage online. When commenting on someone’s posts, add real value to the person whose post you are commenting on, to others reading it, and to yourself. Note that neither a LIKE alone nor a comment under 5 words are considered by the LinkedIn algorithm to be “engagement.”
In your own posts, focus on adding value. Will your post add value to others and yourself?
Endorse skills. On your connection’s profile, identify three skills that you can vouch for and endorse them for those skills. Why not more? This is an attention-getting strategy you may want to use several times.
Use the “tag” function when you mention a person’s name online. They receive an email message from LinkedIn that they have been mentioned in a post. This assures that they will notice your kind mention of them and provides an opportunity for them to respond if they choose to do so.
Use LinkedIn’s messaging function to communicate with people (but only if they are active daily on the LI platform). When you use LinkedIn for sending a note to an individual, your message features your LinkedIn headshot, an important part of your brand.
Send an article via LinkedIn message to a person likely to appreciate it. This shows that you are thinking of them and that you’re paying attention to the kinds of content they may find valuable. Don’t send the article to several people adding their names to the same message. When you do that, you’ve created a group and everyone who responds will automatically be communicating to everyone in the group.
Be helpful because it’s the right thing to do, not because you expect quid pro quo. Eventually all the positivity you’re sending into the world will find its way back to you.

LinkedIn is all about relationships. Remember that relationships emerge through your investment of time and attention. Use LinkedIn’s functionality and these strategies to effectively engage, add value, grow your sphere of influence – and build relationships.

To your success!

Named one of six top branding experts in 2022 by The American Reporter, over the past ten years, I’ve helped countless C-level clients use LinkedIn to frame conversations, impress customers, and introduce themselves before their first conversation takes place. If you are a C-suite executive or senior leader, I can make this easy for you. Based on my knowledge of how LinkedIn works and how people respond to what they see there, I can ensure everything is ready and your profile conveys exactly the message and impression you’re aiming for. Let me help you attract the talent you want to hire, increase your visibility and influence, and steer your career.

Contact me through my website https://carolkaemmerer.com for:

Executive one-on-one assistance with your online brand
Professional speaking engagements on personal brand and LinkedIn
An autographed copy of my book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^ndEdition
My self-paced, online course
To receive my articles in your email mailbox monthly

My award-winning book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-2^nd Edition received BookAuthority’s “Best LinkedIn Books

of All Time” award, and was named one of the “Top 100+ Best Business Books” by The C-Suite Network, and is an International Book Awards winner. For your author-inscribed and signed book or for quantity discounts, order at: https://carolkaemmerer.com/books

Discover your child’s learning style.

Encourage their hobbies.

9Use the resources available.

Encourage independent learning.

Teach self-direction.

Give choices, not ultimatums.

Set routines.

Practice positive communication.

Listen.

The Formula for a Powerful Headline:

Examples:

Other Articles by Carol Kaemmerer

LinkedIn Is All About… [What?]

Quick links

Follow Us