All right. On the podcast today, I have Stapho Thienpont who is here to talk LinkedIn with us. Somebody that is not only a consultant about this thing, but he's, he actually acts on his own advice. You can go check them out on LinkedIn and we'll get to that later on. First off, Stapho, how are you doing today?Ah, I'm doing great. I just came off my own show and you know, I'm just enjoying talking so much on the nice thing like this. Nice to be like here in Europe. Do you like hearing your own voice? Not really, but I do enjoy talking. 

I'm the same way. Hearing my own voice on on microphone. It's kind of weird, but you get over it cause it's 

fun to talk to people.

Yeah. 100%. Awesome. 

Well, before we get into the details of LinkedIn, I know you're going to give us a ton of advice on how to grow on LinkedIn, but first and foremost, I want some quick context on you so that the audience knows who they're dealing with here. So first and foremost, just curious about the story of your career so far, where you got started and how you ended up where you are now, as briefly as you can.

As briefly as I can. Okay. So I lived in issue to Jim and Stockholm, even though I'm originally from Belgium, which is the other side of Europe. one day I realized, you know what, by beating up my friends all day, I'm not really providing much value to the world. I figured I have a knack for both language and systems.

And then. What I figured out was that, marketing is right on the edge of that. I started a Facebook group, got to start working with my favorite author, all this kind of stuff. and before I knew it, I got started with LinkedIn cause I wanted to learn a new platform. I somehow got into a super secret group of people that were basically the best to ever do it on LinkedIn.

And I just started picking their brains and I started learning all this kind of LinkedIn stuff. I did it for myself, and then I figured, you know what? this is so helpful for myself to generate leads and also generate awareness and build connections and network. I'm going to do this as a service for other people.

And since then we've been turning our people into LinkedIn thought leaders and generating leads for them. some highlights were when the multibillion dollar multimedia Titans started reaching out to our clients purely based on the content, but also getting some of our call bites on sales calls with Microsoft Lyme and the like.

So, yeah, it's been a, that's my journey so far, I guess. 

And you're still going, okay. Yeah, the beginning right. 

Definitely, definitely. I don't know if I'm going to limit myself to LinkedIn forever, but I'm definitely still growing strong every day. Awesome. 

And if I were to ask you what you think your professional super power is, what would you say.

That's a really good, a really good question. I'm actually a really good networker. I would say, even though I don't spend much time, I'm really good at building relationships fast and somehow I don't know what it is, but it's when I talk to people, they walk away with the idea that I really know what I'm talking about with makes, it makes it easy for me to sell, but also to get buy in when I'm working with people, which ultimately lasts me to get good results.

But the networking of personal impact is for sure the key, I would say. Well 

that's, that's good because that's what LinkedIn is all about. So let's dive into that and just start talking about how this group of of listeners that are bootstrappers and micro-influencers can actually grow on LinkedIn. My first question really would be, if you are starting out with zero, you're a micro influencer, you are an entrepreneur that's just starting out.

How can you actually get anybody to take your thought leadership seriously? 

Well, first and foremost, you gotta have at least some skill and some