How to Become a LinkedIn Rock Star: By the Only CEO with a Mohawk, Chris J Reed

By Chris J Reed

From front-page notoriety and being fired from his job to becoming a Singaporean citizen and LinkedIn’s most recommended CEO, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and best-selling author. This is about his journey of how LinkedIn changed Chris J Reed's life and how to make other entrepreneurs into LinkedIn Rock Stars. Chris loves to share his entrepreneurial journey and how he became both famous and infamous through the power of LinkedIn. The tips, tricks, hacks, and lessons he shares in this, his fourth best-selling book, anyone can use to achieve their own Rock Star success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, CEO, job seeker, graduate, keynote speaker, someone seeking to move country or get a promotion, or maybe you wish to enhance your personal brand, become a thought leader, or win new clients, new funding, or new employees—you can do everything on LinkedIn that you wish and achieve your professional goals.

This book is the culmination of over a decade of Chris's experience of using LinkedIn globally to find clients both for himself through his acclaimed firm, Black Marketing, and for his clients across the world. This book incorporates the best of his three previous international best-selling books—LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs, Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs, and Social Selling Mastery for Entrepreneurs, as well as updates on all the tips and advice, so you, too, can become a LinkedIn Rock Star. About The Author: Chris J “The Only CEO With A Mohawk” Reed is the No.1 Most Recommended Global LinkedIn Marketing Expert and leads the No.1 Most Recommended Global LinkedIn Masterclass and is the CEO and Founder of the No.1 Most Recommended Global LinkedIn Marketing Firm, Black Marketing, with 2,000 LinkedIn Recommendations.

Chris is also probably one of the most talked-about and infamously known as "The Only CEO With A Mohawk", recognised globally by his notorious pink mohawk!

Chris is a serial, global entrepreneur having created and exited 4 marketing firms in Europe and now the Asia Pacific from his home, Singapore. He loves the place so much that he renounced his UK citizenship and is now a fully-fledged and very passionate Singaporean citizen. Chris has 4 No.1 international bestselling books, "Personal Branding Mastery For Entrepreneurs", "LinkedIn Mastery For Entrepreneurs", "Social Selling Mastery For Entrepreneurs" and now this 4th book “How To Become a LinkedIn Rock Star”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evolve Global Publishing
• Release date: Apr 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463031377

Chris J Reed

Chris J Reed, who lives in Singapore, is a #1 Best Selling Author, a popular public speaker, and he has maintained his status as one of the world's most viewed LinkedIn profiles. He is also an Official LinkedIn Power Profile.Chris J Reed is the Founder and Global CEO of Black Marketing, which is a global marketing consultancy specialising in enabling LinkedIn for C-suite executives and Entrepreneurs across the world.Chris has taken the company, Black Marketing, from one person in one country in 2014 to over 35 people in more than 12 countries in 2016, and they're growing rapidly and looking for other partners to help them to grow in other countries.Chris possesses over 25 years of senior marketing and business experience leading digital, mobile, social, loyalty and partnership/brand marketing agencies in Europe and Asia Pacific, as well as being CMO for global B2C social media brands in both London and Singapore.

Book preview

Introduction

From front-page notoriety and being fired from my job to becoming a Singaporean citizen and LinkedIn’s most recommended CEO, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and best-selling author—this is my journey of how LinkedIn changed my life and how I make other entrepreneurs into LinkedIn Rock Stars.

I love to share my entrepreneurial journey and how I became both famous and infamous through the power of LinkedIn. The tips, tricks, hacks, and lessons I share in this, my fourth best-selling book, anyone can use to achieve their own Rock Star success. 

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, CEO, job seeker, graduate, keynote speaker, someone seeking to move country or get a promotion, or maybe you wish to enhance your personal brand, become a thought leader, or win new clients, new funding, or new employees—you can do everything on LinkedIn that you wish and achieve your professional goals.

This book is the culmination of over a decade of my experience of using LinkedIn globally to find clients both for myself through my acclaimed firm, Black Marketing, and for my clients across the world. 

This book incorporates the best of my three previous international best-selling books—LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs, Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs, and Social Selling Mastery for Entrepreneurs, as well as updates on all the tips and advice, so you, too, can become a LinkedIn Rock Star.

Chapter One: Why LinkedIn?

What's so incredible about LinkedIn? What can it do for you when you really work it? In sharing my own rags to riches journey in this chapter, you will see how LinkedIn took me from a newbie outsider to Rock Star status! Hold on to your hat!

From Hired to Fired

I was an entrepreneur in the UK, and for 20 years, everyone knew who I was in London. I never needed LinkedIn. But then I decided to move to Singapore in the heart of Asia Pacific where I didn’t know a single person. 

So, what did I do?

I asked my then 200 LinkedIn connections who they knew in Singapore and if so could they introduce me. Many did. What surprised me most was that people in Singapore said, yes, they would be delighted to meet me. Had the roles been reversed, I'm not so sure that people in London would have done the same. That’s Singapore for you—friendly, open, helpful, and wonderful to strangers. So I started growing my Singapore network by meeting people and then connecting with them on LinkedIn.

Next, I got my first, second, and third jobs in Singapore by networking through LinkedIn. These jobs were not advertised. I created them by meeting people through LinkedIn. Those were marketing jobs for the whole of Asia Pacific. I barely knew anyone in Singapore, let alone Asia Pacific. So again I turned to LinkedIn to find people in Indonesia, Australia, China, India, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, and so forth. Decision-makers replied, and I started doing a series of marketing deals through the power of using LinkedIn's data to find the right people and then engaging with them through content marketing and social selling. Doesn't it sound pretty rosy and ideal so far? And it was.

That is, until I wrote a blog post about taxi drivers (see chapters 9 and 10). A blog post that would be viewed as very controversial. I then appeared on the front pages of all the newspapers and on the radio, TV, social media, and the rest of the internet for all the wrong reasons. I had achieved infamy. I was then fired from my job.

By this stage, I was also an Official LinkedIn Power Profile and doing training for people around the world on how to use LinkedIn. What this means is that I had a personal brand, something we'll go into in-depth later in the book. Everyone knew who I was. Not always for the right reasons, but they knew my name. I had brand recognition.

Fired to Big-Time Hired

I then used this notoriety and personal brand recognition to launch my LinkedIn marketing firm, Black Marketing, enabling entrepreneurs around the world to maximize the use of LinkedIn to achieve any goal that they wish. At this point, I was using no other social media platforms but LinkedIn, so I became an expert on how to use LinkedIn, which is a never-ending process of refining, learning, experimenting, testing, and delivering for my own companies and my clients.

Soon people forgot why they first learned of my name and just started seeing my acclaimed LinkedIn marketing masterclasses and keynotes. I started appearing in more respectable business publications and on TV, radio, podcasts and social media for the right reasons.

The Essential Element

LinkedIn was and is essential to my personal brand and how Black Marketing has grown and grown for year upon year, winning clients and gaining recommendations. My LinkedIn masterclasses are recommended by everyone who sees them. Anyone can take the tips that I pass on and use them in their own professional capacity, whatever that is. From entrepreneur to CEO; from salesperson to ambitious executive. This is something you'll find in this book as well.

LinkedIn allows you to be a truly global entrepreneur. After almost a decade of running Black Marketing, I have lots of data on which countries are receptive to LinkedIn and our services and price point, and which are not. I also can see countries that used to be great places to do business and are now not, and vice versa.

When I say that my largest market is, in fact, Zurich, even though I live 10,000 kilometres away in Singapore, people ask, How? It’s all about the power of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator and social selling. I use the data to find the right people, meet them, and inspire them by telling them how they can become a LinkedIn Rock Star. After that, I start enabling LinkedIn for them. Chapter 28 explains this in more detail.

I also call Zurich the Singapore of Europe in that it has the same expat makeup, entrepreneur viewpoints, and global ambitions. They are both beautiful places to live and work, both have fantastic infrastructure and airports, and both are tax havens attracting entrepreneurs from around the world with global mindsets.

I regularly visit Zurich and sell out my LinkedIn masterclasses and keynotes there and meet dozens upon dozens of entrepreneurs who are looking to find out about how to use LinkedIn to achieve their goals. There is no competition there. No-one else there has the 2,000 LinkedIn recommendations that I have, and there's no-one else with four international best-selling books who has built a business on enabling LinkedIn for you as I have. With my firm, Black Marketing, we make you a LinkedIn Rock Star, no matter where you live and no matter what you do.

LinkedIn allows you to become a global entrepreneur because you can use the data to find anyone, anywhere and meet them to do business. That’s what LinkedIn is all about. The power to network, the power to do deals using the data, personal branding, content marketing, and social selling. When you implement the tips I give in this book, you too can become a LinkedIn Rock Star.

Don't Take My Word for It, Check Out These Recs

To further encourage you to put in some effort to work LinkedIn to your advantage—or to considering hiring us at Black Marketing to do it for you—I'm providing below a small snippet of the 2,000 recommendations that my previous clients have written for me and Black Marketing. Some of these are from people who listened to my talks, some are Black Marketing clients, some read my other books, and some are from my mastermind groups and workshops; they know me from a wide array of venues. To read more of my 2,000 LinkedIn recommendations, visit my LinkedIn profile at www.LinkedIn.com/in/B2BSocialMarketing. Remember, LinkedIn allows you to contact these clients if you want to ask them particular questions about their experience working with me. And I encourage you to do so!

Again, here are some of those recs:

I worked with Chris and the Black Marketing team to both energize and refocus my profile on LinkedIn. I had read the recommendations and the reviews and admittedly was sceptical over what impact he and his team would have. However, what you don’t know, you really don’t know, and I didn’t know the power of LinkedIn and how to unlock that. Chris and his team did. They did a fantastic job on building out my profile and refocusing my content strategy, which initiated some fantastic connections. In the end they not only significantly increased my influence and stature, but the business gained from their work on LinkedIn, with generated sales reaping a positive return on the investment I made. I am a big believer in the personal brand, especially on LinkedIn. If you want to get into this market, you need to connect (and work) with Chris and his team. There is no-one better.

—Ross Campbell, CEO and Founder

Eye-opening and mind-opening. Chris explodes on to the stage with LinkedIn information to build better business relationships. He's a smart guy who holds your attention. You can't help but listen, learn, and be better.

—Allen Milford Vanik, Professional Voice, Portrait, and Headshot Photographer, Documentary Producer

Recently, I attended the workshop—Polish Your LinkedIn Profile to Outshine—conducted by Chris. It was one of the best and most insightful social media workshops I have ever attended. It was a full-on one hour Q & A with the audience asking any and every question about how to use LinkedIn more effectively. Chris really knows his stuff! He has an in-depth and very technical understanding of the LinkedIn platform for personal and company boosting. I will definitely attend other workshops by Chris and recommend him to anyone serious about using LinkedIn to gain more business traction. Thank you, Chris!

—Wendy Chin Roszini, Business Development: Branding and Design, Content Strategy, Digital Marketing

I have read Chris's LinkedIn for Mastery. It's in my eyes one of the best books about LinkedIn I have seen. And as a LinkedIn pro myself, I still learnt a lot of new things from it. Written in a witty form, never boring, a 5-star review!

—Vaclav Sulista, CEO and Founder

Chris J The Only CEO with a Mohawk Reed gave a keynote speech and a Linked in masterclass to over 100 of us during a global conference in Zurich. The talk was fantastic—it was high energy, fun, practical, and scared us (in a good way!) into swift action. I would highly recommend any company who is interested in improving its social marketing, sales, or recruitment funnel to engage with Chris.

—Maria Norrman, Global Chief of Staff

Chris has actually proven to be the right LinkedIn guru. His strategies have been highly effective, and one can actually start noticing a significant difference in their profile and post viewership and engagement the moment his tactics start being implemented. I'd highly recommend him to anyone in the professional LinkedIn world if they're looking to become a LinkedIn Rock Star to build their personal brand and drive authentic and meaningful leads to their profile.

—Murad Hasan, Entrepreneur, Technologist, and Co-Founder at Amplifyd

I've sat through a LOT of presentations in my 35 years of working life. Dreadful overhead transparency presentations, 75+ PowerPoint slides with six-point font where the facilitators invariably say, I know you can't read this, as they proceed to turn their backs to the gathered audience and read aloud every tiny word on the screen, and these are moments where you question the decisions you've made in your life . . . But then there's Chris J Reed. I was lucky enough to participate in two hours of Chris's high-energy, high-octane presentation about the power of LinkedIn. From key industry facts to vital tips about leveraging the power of LinkedIn, Chris was mesmerizing. He wove in his own story while also emphasizing the importance of messaging, profile standards, and hashtags while pointing out that building a brand takes focus, time, and sustained commitment. Chris energized the entire room, and we're already putting into practice what he told us here at EF Education First. AND he has books! I highly recommend Chris J The Only CEO With a Mohawk Reed!

—Tim O'Shea, Vice President at EF Education First

Chris is the expert on leveraging LinkedIn to enhance your personal or company brand. Hands down. His innovative thinking and adaptability enable Chris to implement unique and effective strategies. Chris has enormous insight into market trends and positioning you or your company to 100x your brand. I would highly, without a doubt, recommend Chris for any person or company seeking an expert in this field.

—John Garabadian, Vice President at Renewable Energy, Wireless Technology: Business Development and Sales, Solar, Wind, Waste to Energy

Chris gave an inspiring LinkedIn keynote talk to a group of seasoned entrepreneurs and engaged every one of us to change our LinkedIn marketing. Chris combined humour with thought-provoking angles to get me thinking about how I could be using LinkedIn to achieve my professional goals! I highly recommend his LinkedIn Masterclass to you.

—Ahmed Alnuaimi, CEO of Munjiz and Technology Commercializer at RPDC

Chris and his team at Black Marketing raised the quality of my profile on LinkedIn to a high professional standard. His expertise in the practices of LinkedIn is world-class, as is his up-to-the-moment understanding of changes in algorithms and nuances in profile styles, strategies, and tactics. In our era, when social media is the go-to platform for insight about others, having a top-notch LinkedIn profile is not just advisable, it is essential for anyone seeking to establish or expand a recognized and trusted persona, brand, or business. If this is your situation–or aspiration–you will be well served to join one of Chris' energetic masterclasses or arrange a one-to-one meeting with Chris to learn what's happening and what's possible for you.

—Ron Kaufman, CEO, Founder, #1 Coaching Guru in the World, and New York Times Best-Selling Author

Chris and the Black Marketing team transformed my personal branding on LinkedIn and created a content marketing strategy.

—Frank O'Rourke, VP of Sales at Core Health and Fitness—Asia Pacific and MENA, Gym Consultant, and Co-Author of Legends of Fitness

A while ago, I faced a LinkedIn challenge and reached out to Chris for help. Not only did