We are absolutely delighted to welcome Richard Bliss, the founder and CEO of BlissPoint Consulting, as today’s guest.
Richard has focused his entire career on helping people with their social selling behavior. He is well-known both inside and outside of our industry as a LinkedIn Top Voices Influencer and an experienced executive communications leader.
Stay tuned as Richard shares his story and offers practical insights on social selling, executive communication, and what truly builds influence on LinkedIn.
Richard’s Journey
Richard began his career with 14 years in the National Guard, earning the rank of Captain, before moving into early enterprise technology in the late 1900s. He became a global evangelist during the rise of email as a business platform, emerging as a leading voice in email security when internet-based threats first appeared. He has spoken in 22 countries, hosted international technology conferences, and built a reputation for helping individuals and organizations understand how fast-moving technologies affect both work and life.
Reinvention
After Richard served as Chief Marketing Officer and helped the startup grow from under $1 million in revenue to more than $10 million, the company abruptly let him go. That forced him to rebuild from scratch, relying on his personal brand rather than a company title. He launched a long-running podcast, self-published a book, taught himself about social media, and reframed LinkedIn as a business media platform rather than a social one. A pivotal $800-a-month consulting role with a senior NetApp executive reopened doors that ultimately led to Richard founding his own company.
Creating Opportunity
Richard believes opportunity comes from deliberately placing yourself where it can find you. What others might view as setbacks, he sees as sequences that lead to better outcomes.
Modern Credibility
In today’s digital-first world, people build credibility online long before they meet in person. Audiences constantly evaluate LinkedIn profiles, even when owners remain inactive. They judge professionalism, expertise, and trustworthiness based on what they see, which makes visibility unavoidable rather than optional.
Small Businesses Have an Advantage
Small business owners often outperform large organizations online because they speak in their own authentic voice. Without layers of corporate filtering, they can tell clear, personal stories and connect directly with their audience. With LinkedIn and generative AI, they can reach customers without gatekeepers, large budgets, or traditional media exposure.
LinkedIn works best when treated as an ongoing conversation rather than a static profile or sales funnel. Profiles and posts should focus on the audience’s problems and opportunities, rather than one’s personal history.
Forming Relationships
Cold outreach and instant pitching undermine trust. Relationships form when value is given initially through attention, insight, and engagement. Comments, referrals, and thoughtful interaction create a natural sense of reciprocity, opening the door to future business conversations.
Building Real Engagement
Artificial engagement pods violate LinkedIn’s rules, so they are increasingly penalized. Genuine collaboration comes from consistent, meaningful interaction with customers, partners, and peers. Thoughtful comments on others’ posts help establish topic authority and increase visibility organically.
Using AI
Generative AI is most effective as a support tool, not a replacement for a human voice. While AI can help shape ideas and drafts, comments and conversations must remain personal. LinkedIn prioritizes authentic, real-time engagement and increasingly suppresses purely AI-generated content.
Practical LinkedIn Rhythm That Actually Works
Sustainable success on LinkedIn requires modest, consistent effort. A small number of meaningful comments each day and one to three posts per week outperform high-volume posting. Conversations should be allowed to develop fully before starting new ones, aligning with how LinkedIn distributes content.
Events, AI, and the Power of In-Person Connection
Despite advances in AI, live events remain irreplaceable. Shared physical experiences, eye contact, and informal conversations build trust in ways digital tools cannot. Competent professionals prepare for events by engaging attendees online beforehand, without pitching, so that in-person meetings feel like natural continuations of existing relationships.
Bio: Richard Bliss
Richard Bliss is a speaker, author, and social media expert. He is the founder and president of BlissPoint, a social media consulting company that helps improve executives’ online communications and sales teams’ social selling behaviors. The industry recognizes Richard as a LinkedIn Top Voices Influencer and an experienced leader in executive communications. His expertise has helped thousands of people master social media tools and become fluent in social conversations, building their platforms and confidence to reach their audience and define their brand effectively.
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Connect with Richard Bliss
On LinkedInEmail Richard: rbliss@blisscorp.com
Listen on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube
“LinkedIn is not a content engine. It’s a conversation engine.”
Richard Bliss
Full transcript of episode 302 of The Business of Meetings podcast, Eric Rozenberg with Richard Bliss. Lightly edited for readability.
Eric Rozenberg: Hello and welcome to the Business of Meetings Podcast. I’m your host, Eric Rozenberg. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of helping businesses in the meetings and events industry grow and succeed. And I’m excited to share that experience with you. If you feel alone and overwhelmed, and if you’re looking to take your business to the next level, improve your strategy and sales, and connect with like-minded professionals, you are in the right place. I invite you to visit EventBusinessFormula.com and join our community of event business owners dedicated to exponential growth. Now let’s dive into today’s episode.
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Business of Meetings Podcast. Today I’m absolutely delighted to speak with someone I’ve been trying to have for quite some time. He’s so well known in our industry and outside of industry, but his whole career is now focused on helping people with LinkedIn, helping people with social selling, your presence online, all the things that none of us are interested in, of course. And so it is my pleasure to have the founder and CEO of BlissPoint Consulting, the Richard Bliss himself. Richard, thank you so much for being with me today.
Richard Bliss: Eric, thank you for having me. That’s quite some introduction. Thank you for that.
Eric Rozenberg: Well, if I only listen to all the people that were in your standing only room at IMEX about your session, I’m sure it’s an understatement the way I’m introducing you. So, that’s what it is.
Richard Bliss: Appreciate that. And IMEX was a lot of fun. There were a lot of energy there, a lot of people, very excited. I’m always happy to be able to have a contribution to people who are having such an impact on the industry.
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. Starting with my friend Taylor Smith that you had to work a lot during your session, right?
Richard Bliss: Yeah. Taylor and I met several months ago, maybe even a year ago, when I was speaking at an event and she came up to me and she just was so excited, and we have enjoyed our conversations back and forth as I’ve continued to work with her and her organization over at Meetings Today magazine.
Eric Rozenberg: Wonderful. Now, I was surprised, and you told me your kids didn’t even know that before. I was surprised to see that your career actually start with 14 years in the National Guard and that you are a captain. So, Captain Richard, can you please let us know how that happened and what is your journey until becoming an entrepreneur?
Richard Bliss: Captain Bliss, right? I have a big B under my shirt. I can just rip it off in a big B and I fly around and solve LinkedIn problems. No, thank you for that. And I started my career, as my team likes to say, in the late 1900s, early technology adoption, WordPerfect Corporation. Many people who are of a certain age and experience remember that. And then I’ve had over the years the opportunity, I’ve traveled extensively. I’ve spoken in 22 countries. I’ve had my own technology conference that I’ve hosted in Buenos Aires and in Santiago, Chile and Sydney and Auckland, Berlin, all over the world, helping people understand how technology, particularly technology, is having an impact on them personally and professionally. In today’s world, that means I’m doing that with LinkedIn and even generative AI and how, as individuals, how this is impacting us. How do we take advantage of this? And sometimes it can be a little overwhelming for folks. And so one of my goals is to simplify that, clarify it, and make it easy for them to understand how to implement it immediately in their lives without worrying about becoming a prompt engineer or how do I do this?
Eric Rozenberg: One thing on your LinkedIn I saw was that when you went from the army to corporate America, you work at Novell and you were a global evangelist, and I couldn’t help but smile, as a small anecdote, because I have a friend who used to work for Apple, and I was a student back at the same time, and I remember being at a conference in the US, going to see him in California and ask him, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I’m a global evangelist for Apple.” I said, “That’s great. What do you do?” He said, “You seen those people preaching on TV?” I said, “Yes.” “I manage all their technology.” And said, “Oh, that’s great.” And then he started laughing. He say, “No, Eric, I’m convincing people to work with Apple and that’s what I’m doing.” And so, you’ve been doing that for two years. Is this correct?
Richard Bliss: Yeah, I did it for quite some time. It was a role I have been involved with. Now, this makes me sound really old. Email since some of the earliest days that email became a business platform. So, I’ve been in the business space, and during the late 90s, I became one of the leading voices in the industry on email security, as there were viruses that started to proliferate across because the internet was new. And so, I’ve been on CNN a couple of times, Headline News, talking about security. And so email was one of the key things that Novell had, and it was out in front with that. And so I spent significant years as a vendor, as a partner, as an employee, convincing people how to deploy and take advantage of the email technology in a personal and professional way. And so in today’s world, I’m kind of doing the same thing that I’ve been doing for a very long time. The technology continues to change, but the need to have somebody help me understand how to apply that to my business continues to be needed, because, and especially the speed, it’s sped up, right? We’re seeing so much, especially with AI right now.
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. Now, fast forward, you decide to start your own business, and I know a lot of people that are listening, for various reasons, are now deciding to start their own business or started their own business in the past. What was the trigger for you to decide to go on your own, and tell us a little bit about the beginning of growing that business?
Richard Bliss: I was the chief marketing officer for a software company, and because they were a startup at the time, I agreed to come on board as a commission-only employee as the chief marketing officer. So I would not take a salary unless the company made money. And if it did, I would take a tiny fraction of the revenue. And the company was under a million dollars. And in the years that I worked with them, we grew it to over 10 million global revenue. Well, that meant my paycheck got bigger and bigger as time went on. And then one day, the founder of the company called me up and said, “Richard, you’re making more money than I am.”
Eric Rozenberg: I thought this was coming.
Richard Bliss: Yeah. Right. So he fired me and gave my job to my wife.
Eric Rozenberg: Right. Okay.
Richard Bliss: Yes. Now ex-wife. It was a very awkward situation. And here’s what happened, Eric. I had spent nearly two decades building my personal brand globally, that I was headline news. I am the leading authority in my subject. And yet now suddenly that network, that reputation has all been taken away. And I can’t, I mean, I can’t go work for a competitor, right? What do I do? And I had to literally reinvent myself. And so I did several things. One, I started a podcast that ran for a decade, very successful podcast. I self-published a book, which is not necessarily a good idea. When you’re the only editor, there’s spelling errors on the back cover. I was like, don’t do that. Get some professional help. I taught myself how to use social media at the time. My Twitter accounts, I had two Twitter accounts. They grew to 25,000 followers each. And I taught myself LinkedIn and how to use that tool. I don’t refer to it as a social media tool. I refer to it as a business media tool, and how to use it for business. And as I was doing all of this, reinventing myself, a company reached out to me here in Silicon Valley, where I live, and said, “Hey, we need somebody on our staff, on our team, that can write.” Good thing they didn’t read the back cover of my book. “Who understands technology, who can work with executives, lives in Silicon Valley, and is available immediately and willing to do it for $800 a month. Are you interested?” And I said…
Eric Rozenberg: The last part is interesting.
Richard Bliss: I said absolutely yes. Now, why? It’s because the individual that I was going to be working with was a gentleman by the name of Tom Mendoza. His company is a $6 billion tech company called NetApp. And that company is one of the pioneers in Silicon Valley. And Tom was a very well-known, established, he was the vice chairman and former president of the $6 billion company. And I’m going to help him develop his online presence. Well, you know where this is going. That opens doors. And I saw the door open and said, I will step through that door and take advantage of that. And shortly after that, I started writing and working with the chief legal officer, the chief revenue officer, and then they had me training the salespeople. And then after several years, another company CEO recruited me and said, “Can you come to do for us what you did for them?” And I was there doing the same thing. And then a time came in transition where that CEO and Mr. Mendoza, whose name happens to be on the side of the business school at the University of Notre Dame, the Mendoza College of Business, it’s his name, he’s the one who gave them, they both came to me and said, “Richard, you need to do this for yourself. Not go work for someone else, but be your own entrepreneur.” They became my first clients. NetApp became one of my clients. My former company became a client. All of a sudden, all of these networks and contacts I had made lined up to become my clients, helping them, either the executive or the sales team or the marketing teams, how to leverage this business media, because it doesn’t follow the normal rules of social media. And so that’s how I kind of, I don’t know if, is that cheating, when I had basically patrons, mentors who are willing to step up and say, we will support you immediately if you step out and allow us to be more successful at what we’re doing. And so that’s kind of positioned myself in that way, and that was almost seven years ago, and right now business is good.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing. I was thinking this is luck, and then immediately thought, actually, Richard create his own luck and create the environment so that he can have luck.
Richard Bliss: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I have believed in that my whole life, as I’ve traveled the world personally and professionally, that if you are willing to put yourself in the path of providence, it will carry you along to the next opportunity, and that doors open. There’s a proverbial, when one door closes, another door opens. Well, yeah. And I had five daughters, and they all refer to it as the same thing. We have what we call Bliss luck. And whether it’s international traveling, I have the best luck when it comes to traveling internationally, or when it comes to serendipitous events, meeting someone, it doesn’t matter. If you’re always open to the idea that the universe wants to bring you good luck, guess what? It does. That’s a little mystical. That’s a little bit of mystical talk here for our podcast, Eric.
Eric Rozenberg: Oh, I don’t care. That’s why I love to have my own podcast. I talk with the people the topic they want to talk about. And by the way, I think that spirituality, mystic and everything, it’s part of also of life. So, it’s all good.
Richard Bliss: It really is. It is. It’s very important to us.
Eric Rozenberg: So, I had two less daughters, but we have the same say in the family about the luck. I actually learned that from somebody who was a captain of industry. His name was Julian when I was a child, and he was like two house down the street.
Richard Bliss: Ah, really?
Eric Rozenberg: And I get to know him, and he was really a big captain of industry in my hometown, and he was telling me then, when he led that company, the last interview would be with him. So the new engineer will be hired, but they will go through a series of interview. The last interview was with him, and he told me that the first question he would ask someone, he said, “Do you have luck?” And if the person was not saying yes, although he’s an engineer himself, it was over. He would not hire that person.
Richard Bliss: Interesting, right? And in my family, they know, my daughter number two has married, and her husband has come to appreciate Bliss luck, that he didn’t really have it that much, but now suddenly everywhere he goes with my daughter, these good things happen, and he’s like, this is a great family to marry into. Right. So, it’s nice to see…
Eric Rozenberg: Yes.
Richard Bliss: …that luck can follow you and be part of the way you approach the world, because…
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely.
Richard Bliss: Because honestly, Eric, the story I just shared with you could be viewed by somebody as a traumatic anger, what a terrible thing. But no, it was a series of events that led me to where I am today, and my life has never been better. And why? Because a few lucky things happened. And $800 a month, people would say that’s crazy. Well, except for suddenly I put myself on a path that $800 was, they’re going to pay me to get access to a whole world that normally I would have never had access to. I’ll take it. Right. Somebody’s going to pay me to get on that train. I’ll get on that train.
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. And now you started business. You’re focusing on helping people, social selling, LinkedIn. One of the thing that you mentioned is that, the Digital-First Leadership, that why for you visibility is the new credibility. And if you can elaborate on that and basically give your advice for small business owners, because obviously for large corporation and big C-level, it sounds obvious, it sounds easy. What about for small business owners? What does it mean for us?
Richard Bliss: I think small business owners have an advantage here, and here’s why, is that, as you talk about the big companies that I have worked with, one of the challenges they face with is that oftentimes those executives, those leaders that I work with, they have built their career with other people managing their messaging, managing their brand. The PR person writes the press release, the executive communication person writes their speeches, person writes their blog. Very seldom are they in a position to actually have an authentic voice, particularly online. Small business owners instead, oftentimes their authentic voice is their business voice. It is who they are, and they are in a position to tell their story from their own voice rather than filtering it through a corporate speak. And the tools today, generative AI and LinkedIn, means that they can reach an audience with no gatekeepers. They don’t have to spend significant money. They don’t have to compete. The book that I wrote, the book Digital-First Leadership that you just referenced, recently, but that book that I wrote many, many years ago that I self-edited, self wrote, published, it was called Stealing the Show. And the idea was how to teach individuals or small businesses to be nimble and compete against the big boys who have bigger budgets, bigger capabilities. But how do you steal the show? How do you dance through that so that your efforts are so tightly focused? I have been part of those big organizations, and oftentimes they have conflicting demands, multiple products. When I was that evangelist that we talked about, my product only represented 10% of the company’s revenue. And yet my budget represented half a percent, 1% of the company’s budget for advertising and marketing. So because, hey, no, we got to go spend it on the big product. Well, wouldn’t you know it, it was my little product that ended up being the one that just drove so much awareness and was out there. My point here is that you can use techniques and tools today as a small business owner to get in front of an audience. This is a question I asked. I asked it at the IMEX event. Raise of hands. How many have a Facebook account? And a bunch of hands went up. And then I said, how many don’t have a Facebook account? And a bunch of hands went up. How many don’t have TikTok? Hands went up. Don’t have X? Hands went up. Don’t have LinkedIn? Not a single hand went up.
Eric Rozenberg: I remember.
Richard Bliss: Right. And that means that, why should we be on LinkedIn as a small business owner? Because that’s where our customers are. Now, if you’re in the mortuary business, there’s a really good chance that your customers are all dead. But the people taking care of the dead person has a LinkedIn account. And that’s a terrible analogy, Eric. But my point here is that almost every business now, as you move up the skill set, blue-collar, your plumbers, your electricians, okay, their customers aren’t looking for them on LinkedIn. And yet, I was speaking to a business owner the other day who had a sales rep. So, it wasn’t a tiny company, and they had a sales call that they wanted the owner to sit in on, on Friday. On Thursday, the sales rep canceled the meeting. And when the owner asked why, they said they looked at your LinkedIn profile and they didn’t think you look very professional, so they went with somebody else who was more professional.
Eric Rozenberg: Oh, okay.
Richard Bliss: And this business owner called me and says, “I never want that to happen again.” When people say, “Well, I’m not really spending time on LinkedIn,” I tell them, “Yeah, you are. You just don’t know it.” Every day people are looking at your LinkedIn profile, almost every day, and they’re judging you and your professionalism and your business acumen and everything based on how you present yourself online, and LinkedIn’s where you present itself. They might not find your blog, but they’ll find your LinkedIn profile.
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. And the opposite of what you said, I think, is also true, as the fact that when you are going to have a meeting with someone, there is no such thing as cold call anymore, because you can find information on that. But the other aspect for me, which I’m very annoyed, and when I have that, I delete the connection, is XYZ will reach out to me, “We have so and so in common, I’d love to be connected.” And when I unfortunately accept the connection, the next thing you know is that I have this about them.
Richard Bliss: And then it’s called a pitch slap, right? You get pitch slapped, right?
Eric Rozenberg: And I disconnect with you immediately.
Richard Bliss: Immediately.
Eric Rozenberg: Immediately. So, what did you advise? Do you have like a formula to engage on LinkedIn as a small business or as a business person at all?
Richard Bliss: The first time I encounter you should not be you asking me for something, right? We meet, and you start immediately asking me for a, you’re a salesperson, so you’re asking me for a connection request, you’re asking me to open an email, you’re asking me to take a phone call, you’re asking me to take some time, you’re asking me to give up some information about my company so you can sell me. You’re asking, asking, asking, and that is not how we build legitimate relationships. We give something. You and I are having a conversation right now partly because I gave something, didn’t I?
Eric Rozenberg: Totally.
Richard Bliss: I gave a presentation. I gave some information. And so you then asked back. We kind of started into this relationship. Now, what’s interesting is that in the English language, and you speak multiple languages, and so in the English language, the concept of attention is framed in a financial transaction. I pay attention to you. I spend time with you. It is a financial transaction. And in English, and especially American culture, if I pay for something, what do I expect back? To get what I want. I want something of equal or greater value.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah.
Richard Bliss: So when someone pays attention to us in our culture, there is a very subtle need to reciprocate in some way. Now you know this, Eric. If you meet someone for the second time and they remember your name and you don’t remember their name, you feel indebted to them. Again, financial. I have a question. You speak what languages?
Eric Rozenberg: Fluently French, Dutch and English, and I have bases in Spanish, Italian, and German.
Richard Bliss: Okay. So, in Dutch, how do you convert the concept of paying attention? How is it said?
Eric Rozenberg: Oh, that I would not know. I would say…
Richard Bliss: How about French?
Eric Rozenberg: The same thing. Pay attention.
Richard Bliss: Pay attention.
Eric Rozenberg: It’s more do. Do attention.
Richard Bliss: And in Spanish, it aint, right? I was just speaking to somebody, Mandarin, it’s to go with the flow. I spoke to somebody about Jamaican. They said it’s to tune in. All of these different words imply that the concept of attention is a very different concept. It’s a giving. It’s a mutual. But in English, and particularly in American culture, it is a financial transaction. I’m going to pay you something and I expect something back. What does that have to do with small businesses and LinkedIn? When it comes to business on LinkedIn, don’t try to get something without paying first. It’s just, it’s not going to work. How do you pay on LinkedIn? Leave a comment on their post. Pay attention. Like something that they said. Pay attention. Reference them. Refer them. Do something to pay forward into this relationship that you wish to have, so that when the time comes for you to ask for that connection request, to ask for that referral, that they are now inclined to rebalance the relationship, to deliver back the value equal to what you have asked for, that you have been given. This is a radical concept for us to think about. We do it naturally, but on LinkedIn you have to do it almost artificially. You have to say, “Okay, if I was in a networking event, would I go around and demand that everybody take my business card and calls me? Here’s my business card. Here’s my…” Right. You’ve seen the movie Groundhog Day.
Eric Rozenberg: Yes.
Richard Bliss: Right. Ned Ryerson.
Eric Rozenberg: Ned Ryerson.
Richard Bliss: Needle-nosed Ned is the one who stops Phil Connors on the street and goes, “Phil, Phil Connors.” And comes running up. He’s got the hat on and he’s trying to sell insurance. “Am I right? I’m right. I’m right. I’m right.” I think of him so often when you just describe the behavior of people on LinkedIn. Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. I’m like, I don’t know you, and we have no reason to be in a relationship until you give me something. Nope. Ned was just trying to, right? So that’s, don’t be Ned Ryerson.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s an excellent example. And then when you look at it as well, it’s going back to Dale Carnegie or to marketing principle. Pay attention, or pay, but it’s really about them. It’s not about you.
Richard Bliss: It’s about them. That’s right. And when I look at somebody’s LinkedIn profile and read it, here’s what, this is counterintuitive, but it’s always about them. Well, shouldn’t it be? It’s my resume. No, LinkedIn is not your resume. LinkedIn is the first step into introducing yourself and finding a way to give value to the other person. Well, how would I do that with my profile? Your About section particularly should start off with your understanding of the problem and opportunity that your prospects and customers either are struggling with or would like to achieve. Not, once upon a time in the late 1900s, I started my career and here’s what I did. And when I was a child, I decided I… No, nobody cares. All they care about is what can you do for them? And sometimes our audiences believe that, the people listening right now believe, well, I’ve been doing this for 30 plus years. Great. We just had this conversation. You’ve been doing this since the late 1900s. That is not impressive to a new generation of people who don’t remember the late 1900s, the previous century, and yet you’re living in it. Well, it gives me seniority, experience. No, it doesn’t. It just says you’re old. Or a young person, a young person who’s starting off saying, “Hey, I just recently graduated from the university. I’m really looking forward to working in this space.” In other words, I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m going to practice on you. We need to take our language and make sure it focuses on the value we bring to the other person who’s listening. Our prospect, our customer, our partner, maybe our employees, instead of here I am. No, here’s what I can do for you. And it’s not even a sales pitch. It’s a value pitch. I understand your challenge. I understand your opportunity. Let me talk to you about how you can achieve that. And so that’s a really mental change that people need to make when it comes to LinkedIn.
Eric Rozenberg: Very interesting. And when you have that, because I know you speak as well about the power of teams, and to really increase visibility for events, visibility for sales. How do you do that when you have a small business? Do you have a network of people? Do you have like this LinkedIn pod? How do you increase that visibility and basically making sure that you’re not the only one to reach out and to speak about the events or what you’re doing?
Richard Bliss: Let’s define the word pod, because it’s very important in today’s context, because of some situations that have happened in the last 10 days on LinkedIn. Pods, for those people who are listening, are groups of people who come together to artificially increase the exposure by commenting and engaging to drive up awareness and reach. LinkedIn last week came out and said in a video that they are aggressively going after these pods to penalize them. It is explicitly against their terms of service.
Eric Rozenberg: Mhm.
Richard Bliss: Okay. I even had somebody text me a few minutes ago just saying, “What about what we’re doing?” I encourage people of like-mindedness and that have a common purpose to work together, to talk to each other on LinkedIn, to have conversations. That’s not a pod. That is a group of people who are supporting each other in a purposeful way. Pods are when you throw your post out there and a bunch of people from some far-off country just simply comment on it because they’re getting paid and you’re paying. And that’s what LinkedIn’s going after. The best way though, Eric, more than anything for a small business, is two things. Number one, they should be actively commenting on the conversations that are already happening with their customers, their partners, and their vendors. And when I say comment, I don’t mean “Thanks for sharing.” That’s not a comment. “Congratulations.” That’s a congratulations. Instead, “I love what you have to say here. One of the things I took away from what you just said was this, this, and this, and I can see how it would do this. Do you see a change in how it works here? Because this is what I’m seeing in my business,” and blah, blah, blah. “Thanks for sharing.” That comment is now part of a conversation. And LinkedIn is reading those comments that you are leaving on other people’s posts to determine whether you should be seen by more people. So, you need to be talking to other people. You can’t just sit, it’s not SEO. You can’t just sit there and have people just come to your profile. You have to be active on the platform. Number two is, if you’re a small business, you should have a small business LinkedIn company page. And from that company page, it doesn’t cost anything. Anybody can have one. I’ve got several, because I have a speaking business and I have my business business and I have a podcast page. So, go for it. Now, take that business page and go comment on other people’s content from your business page, adding that very focused business topic and advice that you can provide. Those two things are going to drive the awareness of your brand, your topic authority, which is what LinkedIn’s now looking for. Are you an authority on a particular topic? As a small business, whether that’s plumbing or event planning, you should become a topic authority, because think about event planners and meeting planners. They’re in the storytelling business.
Eric Rozenberg: They really are.
Richard Bliss: People are going to come to their event. Yeah, they’re going to get something out of it, but they’re probably going to feel something out of it. And you and I both have memories of, oh, remember that event? You go to an event and it’s just like something touched you. And that’s the goal of meeting planners, to make sure that people walk away with the experience, not just we had an event and got an excuse to sit around and drink mimosas and do whatever.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you’re talking about commenting. This is great. And with generative AI, I’m very concerned of people that doing exactly what you recommend, but in the meantime, they using AI to create the answer. So as somebody who would post, and I have to comment on what a machine has been creating, where is the line between being authentic and vulnerable and, in the meantime, doing what’s right for the algorithm?
Richard Bliss: So generative AI, fantastic tool to help us streamline, help us be creative, help us get ideas. And yet, as you’ve just pointed out, it could be a crutch that we use to actually do it for us. And so, there’s a couple of things here that we can talk about. One, LinkedIn is becoming aware of generative AI’s influence on the platform, and they are now, with their own AI engine, basically flagging that and penalizing it. So, if you’re using pure AI to write your content, LinkedIn’s, they’re on to you. Now, there are tools out there that’ll help you comment. Let me give you an example. I work with a lot of executives, and I’ll help them write content. So basically I’m their AI engine. I talk to them. I put something in front of them. They agree to, did I get their voice? And yet I never comment for them, because a comment is extremely personal.
Eric Rozenberg: It really is.
Richard Bliss: Yeah. And that means our comments are the best place for us to show our authenticity. You don’t even have to post anything. I recommend you do, but LinkedIn is not a content engine. It’s a conversation engine. And so your comments should be from you. And I still use AI heavily with Claude and ChatGPT, because I have trained them with hours of conversation I’ve had with ChatGPT and Claude. I’ve spent hours with these tools talking to them, teaching them about what motivates me. It has copies of all the transcripts from my books, my videos, everything I’ve ever done. I’ve written a personal bio for my AI, because they’re personal. And so I’ve trained it to know who I am and what I stand for, so that when it comes time to create something, I can go to it and have high confidence that it’s going to give me something back in my voice with my ideas. And I got to tell you, Eric, there’s been great times where it makes a connection that I forgot. I’m like, “Oh, yeah.”
Eric Rozenberg: And one of those I had that it was fascinating, that is using AI for me in the ideal way. I launched my own AI at IMEX actually, Eric AI, because of serendipity, because I met somebody that came with a friend to my house, and we start talking, and that’s what he’s doing, and they have literally the best proprietary technology in the world. But the point I wanted to make, based on what you just said, I was showing that to some friends who asked questions like, “I’m taking over as a CEO, and what you advise me to do the first 60 days?” I was like, huh, what would I say? And actually my AI was like, “Oh my god, it’s, I feel like I’m listening to you, and this is great. Can you send me the answers?” Then I went back to the guy in the company that is doing the tech. “How do you do that?” He said, “Because it’s more than your knowledge. It is your wisdom, and that they bring together.”
Richard Bliss: Somebody said, “Aren’t you worried about giving away your intellectual property?” I said, “My intellectual property isn’t the value that I bring. It’s the execution of my intellectual property. That’s the value I bring.”
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely.
Richard Bliss: I can give it away for free all day long, but are people going to do it unless I find a way to personally motivate them or overcome their individual challenges? Yeah. But you were going to say something.
Eric Rozenberg: No, I was just, in line of what you just said about posting, and it’s almost the end of the year. I’m telling all the people I’m coaching that you should plan with your, having your dashboard, your KPI for next year, and one of the KPI is on LinkedIn, how many comments you should do per week, how many posts you should do, should be a carousel, should be a post, should be a blog, a video. So sorry to go so tactical, but what would be your recommendations?
Richard Bliss: I have some basic recommendations for people. These are the ones just as a minimum. You should be spending a few minutes a day. A few minutes to leave three comments on three different individuals. And again, those comments can’t be “congrats.” They have to be added substantive to the conversation. Three comments. Who should you comment on? Well, people that you, first-degree connections, people in your company, people in your industry, and then strangers, people who you’d like to know, people who you would like they know who you are. Comment, go find these conversations. And LinkedIn’s new search algorithm that just came out last week now allows you to type in and say, “Find me a meeting planner right in this city who wants this topic,” and it’ll go. LinkedIn’s now search engines have just been rolling out in the last week, week and a half, doing that exact thing.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing.
Richard Bliss: So that you can go find the people you’re looking for, to go talk to them. And you don’t need Premium to make this happen. You don’t need Sales Navigator to make this happen. So three comments a day, and then, if possible, at least one post a week. Now I’ve been on the road. I just got back from Iceland. I’ve been in London. I’ve been all over the US. And have I been able to do one post a week? I have not. And am I suffering for it? A little bit. But if you can, one post a week, just one, something to say, something to talk about. And that is about all you need to do to feel okay. Somebody asked me in my Iceland presentation this week, “Well, what’s the, what looks good? What could I do that looks good? What’s a good behavior?” And I turned around and said, “Three comments a day.” Everybody in the room laughed, because I had just told him. Right, right, right, right. Just three comments. You don’t have to overachieve here. Just start making a memory muscle that you just, every day I’m going to go in and network with an audience so that I can drive my business forward.
Eric Rozenberg: Brilliant. When it comes to posting, you say once a week. Is it then bad to aim at once a day, or…
Richard Bliss: If you post once a day, LinkedIn will penalize your posts and drop your reach by about 45%. Because LinkedIn’s all about a conversation, and it’s like, you started a conversation yesterday. Don’t you want to continue that conversation at least for a little while? And if you just start a new conversation every day, LinkedIn’s like, “All right, well, we’ll just reset every day. We’ll reset and start a new conversation and reset.” Never giving some of those conversations a chance to run and be seen by a wider audience, because you only get one conversation at a time. And so when you start a post today, it stops promoting the post from yesterday. And when you post tomorrow, today’s post will be shut down.
Eric Rozenberg: Interesting.
Richard Bliss: And so watch your posts and see the ones that take off, that really got people talking. Let it run. Don’t get in the way. Don’t be in the hurry to change the topic. Just let it go. Keep comment back on your own post to other people who are talking, and then give it a couple of days, maybe one day, maybe two days, maybe three days. So generally speaking, don’t post once a day.
Eric Rozenberg: Now, that’s really counterintuitive. That’s anti everything you hear, but I’m glad you say that.
Richard Bliss: Yes, but so many people teach that more is better. And on LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s like, more is not better. And certainly don’t post more than once a day, because the first time you post during the day, that’s your first conversation. Every post you do after that during the day, LinkedIn just, they just hide it. People can see it on your profile, but it doesn’t go anywhere. LinkedIn does not push it out to your network. So, you can post as much as you want. LinkedIn’s like, “Yeah, we’ll let you, but we’re not going to actually let you.”
Eric Rozenberg: So what is the ideal number? Because you say, yeah, minimum once a week, but…
Richard Bliss: I would say three times a week would be an optimal number, and then watch it. You can’t also make it automated, because one of those posts is going to do really, really well, and if one of those posts fails, well, then start another conversation the next day, because that one didn’t do anything. So why let it sit there with nobody seeing it? Why don’t you just start a… So what I’m sharing here is that automation on LinkedIn is really hard to be successful, because LinkedIn is looking for organic, authentic, real-time engagement. And if we’re automating it all, then LinkedIn knows that. They’re like, “You’re not here. Why should we promote this? If you’re trying to start a conversation and you’re not even showing up for it, why should we promote this to other people?” That’s not a happy news for a lot of people who are trying to automate and make this easier. I just made it harder.
Eric Rozenberg: Well, it depends if you do want no effort or you want results. Richard, I cannot let this conversation end without asking you what you think about AI and events. Mark Cuban tweeted in June that one of the profession of the future will be event professionals, because people would want more and more to come in person. What’s your view on that? And also, when it comes to social selling, do you do any preparation before going to a specific conference in order to let people know that you’re coming?
Richard Bliss: Absolutely. So let’s address the first one, was event planners, and yes, the real person, in person. I want to see your face. I want to connect with you, can’t be overstated. We saw what happened when we became isolated with the pandemic, and a couple of ironic things happened. One, we became more intimate with each other, which is again counterintuitive. I am in your house and you are in my house at this very moment.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah.
Richard Bliss: Right. You can see cars going by me. I can see the books on your shelf. We never had this level of intimacy at the personal lives of each other until the pandemic changed that.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah.
Richard Bliss: And yet we still are missing that in-person connection, the feel of that handshake, the ability to truly look someone in the eyes. And so that will continue to be a powerful tool. I’m heavily involved in the board game industry. And more and more board game conventions are growing, because people want the chance to sit across from the table and have a shared experience. And so even this morning, I’m giving a speech in April for a whole different industry, and the one thing they wanted to ask me was, could I possibly bring some board games?
Eric Rozenberg: Huh.
Richard Bliss: I’m like, okay. And in Iceland, when I was just in Iceland, same thing. “Hey, this board game thing, could you possibly think about doing some board games the next time you come speak at our event in Iceland?” And it’s like, why? Because that’s something that’s bringing us together that we can’t do virtually. Yeah, you can play a video game, but the idea of coming together to share a mutual storytelling experience like a board game is just like coming together for a meeting event, where we have a shared experience. We listen to somebody, we connect with each other, we share our stories. That can’t be taken away. The other one that you asked me, I completely forgot. What was the second question?
Eric Rozenberg: What can you do before going to an event using…
Richard Bliss: Yeah.
Eric Rozenberg: So I know you share a brilliant example.
Richard Bliss: I shared this example that you heard at the IMEX event, and that is, and I did it just with the event I was just at. When you register for the event, they often have the app that allows you to see the attendees. Go through that list, identify the ones that you would like to meet, get to know, connect with. And now this is what my team did. So two weeks before an event in Las Vegas, they identified that of the attendees, 100 of them were prospects for our business. So for two weeks, they started engaging with them on LinkedIn following three rules. Rule number one, don’t talk about the conference. Rule number two, don’t talk about our business. And rule number three, do not under any circumstances send a connection request.
Eric Rozenberg: Okay, very counterintuitive.
Richard Bliss: And yet when my team walked into that conference, 100 people, they said they felt like rock stars. A hundred people were like, “It is so great to meet you in person.” And then either they or the prospect initiated a connection request on LinkedIn on the spot. And you already know the answer, Eric, but I’ll tell your audience. Of the 100 prospects, 100% accepted a connection request on LinkedIn on the spot, and 22 accepted a follow-up sales call. What should you be doing before an event? You should be building that relationship so that when you walk in the door, you’re already known to each other. You have paid attention to them, so that when you meet in person, they reciprocate and give you something back in value by paying attention to you. And so those would be the advice that I would provide.
Eric Rozenberg: Thank you, Richard. My two last question to end, but the first one, what people do if they want to get in touch with you?
Richard Bliss: LinkedIn’s probably the easiest way, or my email address is, they can just email me, like Richard Bliss, but just RBliss at blisscorp.com, is the easiest way for the people to reach out to me.
Eric Rozenberg: Wonderful. And my last one, when we meet again in one year with a bottle of champagne, what are we going to celebrate?
Richard Bliss: We’re going to celebrate that so many people listen to this podcast that they have reached out to you by email and said, “It changed my business. Thank you, Eric, for having this opportunity for me to learn so many good things.” That’s what’s going to happen in a year from now.
Eric Rozenberg: And thank you, Richard, for taking the time to speak with me today.
Richard Bliss: Eric, it’s been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Eric Rozenberg: Thank you for tuning in to the Business of Meetings Podcast. I hope you found today’s episode valuable. If you enjoyed the show, the most important thing you can do is leave a review and share it with your colleagues. It really helps spread the word. I truly appreciate your support. And if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, don’t forget to visit EventBusinessFormula.com to learn more about how we are helping event business owners like you. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
