Tracy Enos Shares Her Unique Journey of Determination to Rise to the Top

Pamela Bardhi
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of underdog. Today I have an incredible guest here with me, Tracy Enos how are you, my friend?

Tracy Enos
Hey, Pamela I’m wonderful. Thanks for having me on today.

Pamela Bardhi
Thank you so much for being here. You’re a rock star of many realms and I cannot wait to get into your story. For we get into I’m going to start off with my most favourite question. Which is what inspired you on your path to where you are today?

Tracy Enos
I don’t think it was inspiration, I think it was a necessity out of necessity being a single parent. And I lost my job in the housing crisis back in 08. Then I also got divorced file for divorce like within a month from each other. And it was really sucked and I couldn’t find a job anywhere and I live down in Branson Missouri area. So I couldn’t find a job for months and months and so I finally looked back up to Kansas City area where I came from. I found a job with a real estate firm being their mortgage broker for the office. They did probably 80% of the foreclosures in urban core and some suburbs of Kansas City. So I had some job security there.

But the problem with that was, the new school where I live, I live the suburb of Kansas City. They were charging after school care for two kids just for two hours. And they didn’t have to leave the school, they still stayed at the school $700 a month in just two hours of childcare per day. So I worked something out with the broker, the owner of the real estate firm. And I was able to leave some notes and didn’t have to pay that at the time. But eventually she closed up shop when the market improved and moved us over back here to another real estate firm in Lee’s Summit. She wanted to double-dip and I just told her to go, so I was like a little smarter than that. So then I couldn’t find another job.

And I was kind of having to find something that would be a little flexible In order for me to get the kids off the bus. I would have to pay that two car payments, honestly of childcare and being it’s expensive for anyway. So eventually I found a job on LinkedIn and it allowed me to work from home. Eventually I ended up working from home, but I would go around to the Sam’s clubs and Costcos. I would demo their health product on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And within a week I became the lead. So now I was in charge of all the other promoters with seven stores in the city. Then within two months I became field regional manager and I had seven states in 83 Stores. Whoo.

That was a lot, a lot of work and then I started doing a lot of travelling and I at the time I had a boyfriend and he helped out a lot. And of course, the kids, his dad had moved up this way. So that helped out too, but so was that a necessity, not out of really inspiration. And my business has evolved over time when I first started my marketing agency after I got laid off from the health company. That second time from corporate American for years laid off that just was really horrible. I started a digital marketing agency and although I love selling the services, I didn’t like fulfilling the services because a lot of work.

But that allowed me to work from home and then I started getting some LinkedIn clients. And then those clients are like, because I couldn’t find business in my own backyard. Like I go to these network meetings, BNI meetings, I think I was spending more money on wine than I was making money. And I think out of the whole year I did this. I got one client and he happened to be my first LinkedIn client and he was a startup biotech company here in the city. From there just kind of blend on like, you know, I found my job on LinkedIn with a nutrition company. Let’s see if I can find my clients on LinkedIn.

Eventually I started getting clients, like one of my biggest clients was a Philadelphia commercial roofing firm. Then I got another digital marketing agency out of Houston and then I started getting Canadian clients. And then it just ballooned from there and eventually those people were like, well. We love what you’re doing for us or how are you doing it? Can you do that for us as well? I mean and In the consulting agency was born from that point. And I’ve been working from home ever since and never had a paid a dime to. You know, the daycare after school daycare for the kids.

Pamela Bardhi
There you go rock star oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing that. And it’s amazing how life takes us in certain walks of life. Like, if you had never gotten laid off, you would have never left there would have never started because

Tracy Enos
I was making six figures. It was a nice cushy job. And I did it really well, so it was easy for me. And it’s funny how life takes a turn. So just like I was telling you, I’m a weeble wobble, like the toys back in it was back in the 70s or 80s. I don’t fall down.

Pamela Bardhi
Amazing. I think that a lot of people can relate who are listening say. I’ve had a lot of friends family a lot and a lot of people that I know that have lost jobs during COVID. So it’s how do you bounce back from that? And how did you deal with almost that rejection inserted into such a positive thing? I know you mentioned it was out of necessity was still still take strength, the just plug forward like that.

Tracy Enos
Yeah and some tenacity, you know and so like a lot of your clients or people that lost their jobs during COVID. I lost a lot of my clients during COVID, because they were employed with large companies. So they were either were laid off or furloughed or they had to take a huge dip in their income in order to keep their jobs. For example one of my two ladies that I was starting to work with at the beginning of COVID work for a large advertising firm in New York City. And they had to take a 20% pay cut to keep their jobs. Therefore they couldn’t pay me to work with them at that point.

I had another client who worked for a prestigious and the real estate side of things for prestigious Jim out in LA and you know, finding real estate for new locations and stuff. He lost his job and then all three of his kids lost their jobs and he had to move all of them in their families into his house. So I was affected just as well as those folks. Were not all of them were business owners. But what I did do is I just turned back to LinkedIn and within a couple months. I ended up having eight podcast interviews and speaking gigs, even one in Dubai because of using LinkedIn. Absolutely I didn’t pay money to do ads or anything like that I just took to my network. And that kept myself afloat.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible, that’s incredibly temporary. That makes lemon Mojito goes off of and I love that. I love that. Now question for you. So Tracy, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Tracy Enos
I wanted to be a veterinarian believe it or not, I was adopted when I was nine. And he was a veterinarian and so when I was nine years old, I got tasked at the clinic to clean all the cages in the kennels you know. The job that you can think of at the clinic. I didn’t care it allowed me to play with the animals and I just loved animals. You know, growing up and so even today, I have a big old Rottweiler

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. So growing up as a kid is what was your favourite animal when you work in.

Tracy Enos
Dogs and horses? I would say dogs more than horses because horses you know. They’re out in the field and you have to go get him in and it’s a chore to sell them up and brush him do all that stuff. A dog is just happy go lucky horses run from you. Oh, I know why you’re coming out to get me I do not want to be saddled today. Horse you know? So where’s the dog? You know, they’re just happy to see you all the time.

Pamela Bardhi
So oh my god. At my wedding, my little dog she went down a remote-controlled car. And that was one of the highlights for many people.

Tracy Enos
So cute. Love it.

Pamela Bardhi
Dogs are hilarious. I love them so much.

Tracy Enos
I don’t think that would go over really well. Having a big old Rottweiler coming down church might scare off a lot of the guests.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh my god, I love it. So Tracy growing up like who or it could be multiple people or things that inspired you growing up. Like who would was like a big inspiration or big mentor in your life?

Tracy Enos
You know, that’s hard to say because like I said, I was adopted when I was nine and I had a very rough childhood. It was an orphanage and I was in foster care for almost three years. Bounced around from family member to family member hit the orphanage when I was five. My mother put me in an orphanage and then finally six services took me out of there and placement in foster care. So my formative years were very traumatic, so I could honestly say growing up, I would say was my dad. He worked really hard, I love the clinic and from a very young age, I learned not just discipline but I learned how to work.

And being From a Catholic family and a big family, I’m the youngest of seven. We had lots of chores like three hours of chores every Saturday and half an hour every day after school. Unless I had a sporting event or it was a special day like my birthday or something like that. So I was no stranger to work. But when I went to the clinic and had to clean cages there was a benefit. The benefit was I got to play with the animals and then I got to learn some things like what vet techs were doing and watching my dad do surgeries and things like that. And so there was always a reward with that and so I learned early on that with hard work comes reward. So that’s why I looked up to my dad.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible. How long were you at the clinic for with how long did you have the clinic.

Tracy Enos
When I graduated high school, he had a year later he had sold the clinic attempted to retire. That didn’t last very long and as my mom would say, it was he couldn’t play enough golf. And so my dad’s horrible and he cheats at golf all the time as my brother’s. So they moved to rescue California, which is about an hour or so from Tahoe. And so my dad had an opportunity to help two failing clinics and one in Placerville. One in Eldorado and he purchased interest in both of those and he brought them back up to speed. So he sold one for seven figures in San Jose and then he invested into others. Eventually he sold those for his share for over seven figures as well.

But I know I worked at the Eldorado clinic because I painted the darn thing when I was 17 years old, the whole interior. So again hard work. My dad was a very good businessman and that’s what I looked up to with him. And he told me something when I was young age at the first Veterinary Clinic. He said, you need to know everybody’s job from the janitor up to the CEO, because even if you have to hire somebody or somebody leaves that job. So has to get done, so either you either have to know how to do it, or you have to know how to hire somebody quickly that can do the job. And that’s always stuck with me.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. Well, that’s so true though any entrepreneur knows every facet of the business?

Tracy Enos
Even if they don’t do it well, like the tech side you know, how long something should take you know. What looks broken, what doesn’t and then you find somebody to go fix it. Trust me. I went through that this last summer.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, wow, Tracy. So after high school, what was your trajectory?

Tracy Enos
Well, I got accepted at Sacramento State and unfortunately my veterinary dreams went out the window when I realised how much college I would have to do. Like, I’m not doing this, so I decided I wanted to get into sports medicine. Then I realised how much biology I would have to do, like this not happening. So I kind of flunked out In my first semester of college, I got kicked out of the dorm because I got shingles and everybody thought. I had chickenpox and no amount of trying to convince the college that I didn’t have chickenpox that I had shingles. So I was in my parents were of no help at that point, so I just told everybody to go Fly kite and I moved back to San Jose move in with a friend. And then within a few months I joined the Navy.

Pamela Bardhi
Wow. So you had left college and went and joined the Navy?

Tracy Enos
Well, not long enough I end up with an injury in boot camp. But here’s the cool thing. So when we were a junior in high school, it was required for us to take the ASVAB score regardless of whether you’re going to go in the military or not. It was required and because my bad scores, I walked into boot camp as an E to in aviation electronic tech. Then as soon as I graduated boot camp. I was an e4 that takes people sometimes four years to get there in a matter of eight weeks, I was an e4. And I was working on an E five, I wanted to go over to Spain and work be a naval flight officer was my goal and work on the big planes.

The big P threes that go and sweep over the ocean and looking for mind sir and ocean and stuff. So that’s why I wanted to be the tech behind the pilot with the radar and everything like that, so that was my goal at that point. But I got myself injured and they gave me a medical discharge. Well, they gave me a choice they said well. You can stay in but another bill it’s not gonna be open for nearly a year. Which meant I had to stay in the barracks and clean the barracks which sucked. And waiting for another billets open at the base or I could get a medical discharge.

So I went from being an aviation electronics Tech with combat experience and clearance to a secretary behind a desk. Y’all can just go fly paid. I was smart as 19 year old at that time, you know. And I’m gonna be honest with you, I tried to get back in after my daughter was born and I was in South Dakota at time. So I petitioned our senator and I said, Hey, look, I think I was wrongfully because my knee was fine. Never had surgery on it, they get a scope on my knees, I had water on the knee and I was on crutches for a few weeks.

But I didn’t have any open knee surgery or anything like that. I’m like, look, I think I was unfairly kicked out of the military. And so he got me back in and I went through medical and I passed with flying colours and they’re like. Alright you can come back in and then at that point, my daughter was born, I was like, I’m not sure I can leave her for four years. So I didn’t end up reentry and back into the military. But I made a point with the military-like because I think that the time I was one of the first women that was combat rated in aviation. And the men didn’t like it.

They did not like these women coming in and taking some of these positions that were open. I’m not kidding you and anybody listening to this, if you’re in the military you can say what you want. But I was the only girl in my class between the Navy and the Marine guys, only girl, there’s only a few of us at the time. So I just think that the company commanders up above didn’t like the fact that these women were really starting to come in and get these assignments. And that was their way of getting me out of there as fast as they could, so I was unfairly targeted.

Pamela Bardhi
So what year was that?

Tracy Enos
80 89 90.

Pamela Bardhi
One of the first females in your class. That’s pretty badass to be 19 and be working on aviation electronics.

Tracy Enos
And I know I had it in me but I scored really high in the ASTM score and you’re gonna laugh. I can’t put together my TV and hook everything up, I have to ask my son. Maybe that’s just because my old age and I just haven’t been you know, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s so incredible to be a teenager and literally working on such a dynamic thing.

Tracy Enos
Yeah, we’re working on fighter planes. So you know, on the black boxes on these fighter planes, so I was in charge of a six B’s in a sixes. I think been a while when brains got a little kind of some cobwebs in there. But yeah, so yeah, I mean we would run out on the flight line, if the pilot saying there was something wrong with the plane or whatnot. So yeah or like when like when planes or copters would ever crash. Then we retrieve the black boxes and get the information out of the black boxes.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible, totally badass, by the way, like, holy crap. Wow. And then from there, I love that you went back and you’re like, No, I was taken out.

Tracy Enos
I’m still fighting my veteran status right now.

Pamela Bardhi
Really? Suffer for a few years?

Tracy Enos
No, I was in their year, so but they don’t want to give it to me. They said that I was discharged even though I was honorably discharged. It wasn’t in long enough. So fight.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, man. That’s incredible. What an experience though for you to have on there.

Tracy Enos
I got my package of papers, they DD 214 and all my transcripts and everything like that from DC. And so I got a gentleman who actually came in and did my cable a few years ago says look. If you’re the VA here in Kansas City is not helping you. Here’s a number somebody out in Florida, that will jump on this really quick.

Pamela Bardhi
What a network. That’s fantastic. So after you’ve made your transition there and you had your daughter, that’s when you went into the the corporate world.

Tracy Enos
Not eventually I went into sales and then I became a bartender. I was 21 when I had her and I’d had a son while I was in the military. Because I married a guy that was in my boot camp, brother boot camp. And then he was also in the same class as me. He was also an 80. I’m married that fella but filed for divorce, I’m just under two years that we were married.

It was not a very good situation found out three weeks after I filed for divorce. I was pregnant with my daughter, so now I have two kids. So it was very difficult and then have support from my family time. I had to do what I had to do, so I started bartending. Now I’m waitressing and that’s what I did for quite a long time. At that point, didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Pamela Bardhi
Same thing with me, I started to delivering pizzas when I was 16, I started working on my parents restaurant I was set but as soon as I got my licence, that’s what I started doing. I was bartending and everything for a while and delivering food and doing all these things like the hospitality industry is such an amazing prerequisite for entrepreneurship. It’s incredible. So when people mentioned that I’m like, no mention it, because it’s fantastic. It means you can handle pressure. You can multitask, you can do all these things. If you’re an excellent bartender or waitress, I automatically know you’re built for business period.

Tracy Enos
I ended up being the favorite bartender at the country club in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And then that you’re gonna laugh at this the name of the country club was westward. I worked some of the banquet sometimes for extra money. And they had this specialty dressing called home dressing, blue cheese and French dressing mixed together. It’s actually really good. But we just laugh that it was called hairdressing

Pamela Bardhi
That’s hilarious, I love it, I just love the different parts of your journey, because you know what it is like, life is so not linear. And so many people think that it is and I’m like, it’s just so Oh. You literally went from so many different things all at once in veterinarians and navy to bartending to now the golden expert LinkedIn advisor. Which I love how you mentioned the realness and behind how you started. Sometimes it’s just in your path, it’s in your wheelhouse and you just make it happen. And I mean, but starting businesses can be superduper scary. So when you do it.

Tracy Enos
It was also pretty sloppy to get there too. There was no, there was nobody had given me a set of a framework, you know. I didn’t have a system and that’s one thing I really learned in the military was it’s all about systems, something that is duplicatable and repeatable. And then it becomes a system and then that’s something that anyone can follow. As long as you have the steps to get there from start to finish and I didn’t have that when I first started. I didn’t have that roadmap framework system, whatever you want to call it. So I was drawing that strings, I was throwing the spaghetti against the wall and hoping that it would stick, so I was trying all these things because I’m an info junkie.

So I was buying people’s courses, I was reading business books, I was trying NASS trying that. And now I would consider myself having a master’s degree in LinkedIn. Because I’m in the trenches every day and I’m still even learning because as we know. Social media changes very rapidly and I’m not always the first to know about it. But I try to be for my clients, so I can give them a leg up on all the new features or things that have been removed and whatnot. So I created stumbling over my feet many times and now have a system that I follow. That now I can teach other people to follow the same system and to generate success as well.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that and what was it like starting in the beginning, like brand new like you said, you were trying everything in the beginning. And I feel you on that, because when I first got into real estate. I knew nothing about real estate like it was like a total abyss, I was at every seminar, every networking event online. Gouging my eyes out with content, trying to learn to build something.

Tracy Enos
That was my similar journey as well, in my consulting business or marketing business, I just kept climbing my way up there and figuring it out. And if something didn’t work, then I didn’t beat myself up over it. Even now, I have epic failures. Trust me. I did.

Pamela Bardhi
Lessons.

Tracy Enos
All right, I’ll give you that lessons, but not everything that I do in my marketing is a home run. It’s just not and so you just got to figure out what works. But if you don’t have the foundation, prior to trying to figure out what works, then you’re just, I call it home marketing. That’s hoping, you know, throw it against the wall and hope that it sticks, hope marketing. So I do encourage people, get into the entrepreneurial space, start following influencers, see what they’re doing. Or go look at potential competitors and go see what they’re doing, get on their Newsletter Lists. See what email, see what products they have, see what their systems are. And see if you can create something that don’t plagiarise, but we call it swipe and deploy.

Do something and make it better, you know, be better than that. So, you got to have a customer and your competitors, but you also need to understand who’s your ideal audience. Otherwise, you’re just marketing everybody. When you’re marketing everybody, you’re marketing to no one. So like, a lot of businesses like trust me, I can work with just about anybody on LinkedIn, that’s business to business. Even some business to customer, but I prefer not to. And I’ve over the years have figured out that I don’t work well with engineers, they’re too smart. Everything they say is way over my head and I do know that I can’t work with certain financial advisors. Not because I don’t have the talent.

It’s because the SEC if they hold any series licenses, they are really limited to what they can accomplish in doing LinkedIn. And even then, if they work for a large financial firm. They have an additional layer of compliance as well, so that makes it incredibly difficult. So I choose to go after more of the entrepreneurial type of folks or even the small medium-sized business owners. I have a client in Canada, that’s one of the few engineers that I work with. But he has a team that helps go through some of the terminology and whatever. He’s incredibly skilled as a mechanical engineer and he makes luxury home products for to prevent home falls. But it doesn’t look like your bathroom is some stale hospital room or hospital bathroom.

These products, they’re very luxurious homes. So you’re still preventing the false yet you don’t feel like it. He feel like it’s home instead of a hospital, so those are some of the clients so he’s an entrepreneur, he started this business years ago. But I mean, I’ve worked with everybody from the solo entrepreneurs just getting started taking their side gig and making it a full-time income to the $50 million SaaS company. So I worked with them all, but I do prefer to work with the folks that already have a consulting business. I worked with a lot of authors, and small to medium-sized businesses that probably have 10 to 20 employees.

Tracy’s Biggest Lessons Learned in Business

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible. So Tracy, what have been some of your biggest lessons learned like in business or like favorite stories of different things like throughout your, your marketing business.

Tracy Enos
Favorite stories? I have some funny stories. So when I started my digital marketing business on the encouragement. My sister passed away like four or five months after she sat me down and said. You were doing this as a side gig and you were doing it for free, she goes, now it’s time for you to get paid to do this. I took that advice and I went home and I made the jump. And even though my savings were running out, so when I did that I created digital marketing. She was doing like building WordPress websites, we were setting up people’s Facebook business pages hadn’t done any LinkedIn at that point yet. We were getting the businesses in the business directories and on the carousel. And Google Maps and some reputation marketing and stuff like that.

Like I told you it was fun to sell. I hated fulfilling, it was a lot of work. But I went to a marketing conference. And I liked going to seminars, they’re fun, you get all jazzed that you get home and you’re on overwhelm. You’re like, oh gosh, I don’t know what to do next. But this particular one was pretty good and it was in San Diego and I had to fly into Phoenix. And then take a connecting flight into San Diego. When I got into Phoenix, all of a sudden they closed down the airport. Now mind you, they’re starting at 7 am The next morning and it’s like five or six o’clock at night when I flew to the airport. Well, apparently a gunman ran into the airport they had there was a shootout at the gas station across from the airport.

They ran into the parking garage caught one of the guys didn’t catch the other guy, so they shut down the whole airport. What happened is they weren’t letting anybody in anybody out including the airline employees. So we had a pilot, but we didn’t have enough staff. You know, the Woody, I don’t know what the technical term is stewards stewardesses. Yeah, I don’t know what the PC term is anymore, so we didn’t have enough though. So our flight got canceled. Well, I’m running around, now I have like, look, I got my carry on and my luggage and I bought high heels on because really when I came into San Diego. My goal is to meet some people and go and have some cocktails.

And they’re like, Well, you now have to go to this whole other concourse, call the airline, see if you can get on a flight, what not. I completely throw my back out with this luggage and everything walking in high heels. Oh, that was just the worst thing. So that’s not the funny thing now is a horrible thing. I didn’t get in until midnight and I got there just in time to have like a couple drinks at the bar before they closed it down at the hotel. But the next morning, which was really fun and we had four multimillionaires that were putting on on this marketing conference. And if you wanted to get it like one of the very few hot seats. So was the conference was Friday through Sunday.

And my birthday was on Saturday. So this was on Friday morning you could fill out an application for that hot seat. Well, I was one of the first ones chosen for the hot seat. It was seven minutes and they were going to dissect your business, your website or whatever. And it just so happens I can barely walk and I got one of his names was Mike. He helped me up onto the stage and they had, you know, chair height stairs or chairs. Then one of the ladies, her name was Pamela’s as well. She’s worked for Tony Robbins and my hair was super long. So she complimented my hair and then there was Phil Paul. He was the podcast guy and then at Rush, he was CEO, consultant, former fighter pilot and I think it was marine anyway.

So they dissect my business in seven minutes, they told me to fire all my local clients. Write a book and start doing LinkedIn, start cutting LinkedIn consulting. And that’s really where when my business took that turn, I did not fire all my clients, I fired one client, which actually was my hairdresser. He got his office, I fired the salon and then I just kind of phased out the rest of my clients said here, I’m going in a different direction. Here’s what we’re doing and that was how my business was really born and that was in September of 2014. I’ve been working doing some LinkedIn stuff, but I was getting more and more clients.

And they said, this is what you need to be doing and I listened. Well, about a year later, I get this message on Facebook, my Facebook business page, not on LinkedIn. Remember, I’m the LinkedIn girl, but on my Facebook business page, Ed gives me his direct cell phone number says, Hey, are you still doing that LinkedIn thing? It was exactly those words, you still got LinkedIn thing I call them he actually answered. And we worked together for almost four years. Kind of funny story throughout my back and must have been memorable somehow. I took their advice and that was that’s how the consulting business was born.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible. And JC what were some of your biggest lessons you had mentioned that you wish you had somebody would give you kind of a business blueprint before you started. So what would be some of your biggest tips and creating a successful business, if you will?

Tracy Enos
Well, I’ve had to learn the hard way. I’m a perfectionist and this is I remember what Mike canings had said Good Money loves speed. And I’m like, Man, he’s right. But that perfectionist in me is like, alright, this landing page has to be perfect, the copy has to be perfect. The videos have to be perfect, the article has to be perfect, the messages have to be perfect before I pull the trigger. Hmm. Now it’s called Fail forward fast.

And I think that’s the biggest lesson I think entrepreneurs should take. Don’t take the route that I took, because I’d been a multimillionaire a long time ago. If I had taken heed to those lessons, fail forward fast. Just get it out there and improve it as you go. Okay, don’t sit back and keep perfecting every little thing, because then you’ll never launch. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned in being an entrepreneur, go for it.

Pamela Bardhi
I’m the same exact way, I’m just I’m like, Nope, this has to be more than I can launch. You just go.

Tracy Enos
Yeah, you just go. That’s why it took me so long to get my book out.

Pamela Bardhi
Let’s talk about your book. Definitely talk about your book.

Tracy Enos
This book behind me it’s LinkedIn publishing your profits, I wrote it in 2016 actually didn’t write it. I performed it, we got it transcribed and then got to edit it. And then LinkedIn made a bunch of changes to the publishing platform. I’m so glad I didn’t publish the book, because I would have had to pull it immediately, but are frustrated. So I didn’t write it again until Ed Rush was emceeing an event Dan Kennedy’s event in Cleveland. And they were looking for some speakers for the advanced bonus day and they wanted somebody to speak about LinkedIn. Well, all he did was make an introduction. He goes Tracee, it’s up to you. I did not get you this job. This is on you.

And so I went through the interview process and I just showed some of my work and all that fun stuff and I’m a Dan Kennedy student at the time. She also had a Dan Kennedy student and they allowed me to come speak. I spoke at Dan Kenny’s event with some big people on the main stage that Dan Kennedy was on. And so I shared the same stage with some really big speakers and very successful folks and I couldn’t go to the event saying I wasn’t a best-selling author. So this one, I decided, you know what, Lincoln’s calm down a little bit. I can write, I can finally write this book and so I did and I didn’t write it all the way. But I wrote just enough where I submitted it to Amazon and then I pre-sold it.

And within 36 hours, I was number one in Canada and in the United States. Then I use that as clout in my presentation as a best-selling author and I’d already had the graphics done and everything like that. It was pretty cool and then I got a bunch of new clients from that event, but new coaching clients. So I’m onboarding all these clients when I still got to write this book. And so Amazon gives you a deadline, you’ve got 90 days to publish it and I missed the 90 days I asked for an extension, they said. If you don’t meet this extension, you’ll never be able to pre-sell your book ever again, you’ll have to just have it published.

And so for 32 days straight, right after Christmas, when I got all my new clients on board and everything was running like a well-oiled machine. I spent four hours a day writing this darn book and I finally published it on February 7 of 2018. Now that book is a little bit outdated because LinkedIn has made a tonne of changes. So we are doing version 2.0, this winter. But that book was responsible in 2018, for 25% of my income. Doing podcasts, interviews, speaking gigs and getting clients, and then even from some of those podcast interviews. I’ve got people from Holland in the UK, interested and I secured coaching clients, Germany, Holland, UK, from that book. That book was responsible for well into six figures of income. And for a year and a half. It’s at number one in two categories.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible. Oh my God. So without spoiling it too much. Can you give us some little snippets of that amazing book?

Tracy Enos
Well, it’s the sub headline is a simple five-step system where we talked about systems. Simple five-step system to attract high-paying clients media attention and speaking engagements. As I said, a lot of this is still out of date. But the first chapter is all about your profile in the foundation work that we talked about here just a little bit ago. And so that’s very important in LinkedIn, unlike any other social media, like Facebook or Instagram. Whatever you got short bios will LinkedIn, you have a big profile and so we talked about how it should be very client-facing. So it’s not all about you, LinkedIn grown up since then. Since back in, I think they were 2002 2003.

They’ve grown up a lot and they’ve grown up not because they change, it’s the members on LinkedIn, that they started taking notice. And like people are really starting to use the platform not just to find good talent or candidates to fill open positions. But people are using it for marketing. They’re using it for creativity, they’re using it for unique content and things like that. So it’s all about your profile because 99% of the activities that you do on LinkedIn are tied your personal profile. Company pages are very limited in the activities that can you can do. They can do more and more things now than when I wrote this book, but it’s still about your profile, your personal profile.

But what people are forgetting about the profile is the human side of you. Look, we do business with people we know I can trust. So if this is like a cold person that you’re reaching out to. Or somebody sees an article that you wrote or a piece of content in the newsfeed or something like that. They don’t know you, so it’s all about perception. So they have to perceive to know you, what people forget is they don’t fill up the rest of their profile. Like their volunteer work organizations, they support any big projects that they worked on or collaborated with even education. Look, I don’t have a traditional education, but it put my military experience in there.

And trust me, I know when Sony’s looking at my profile because they mentioned the military experience. Well guess what that just said, that is now a warm conversation instead of a cold conversation. And those are the conversations that I like, definitely. But then we talk a lot a little bit about the publishing platform. Like I said, that’s changed a lot. I won’t go into that here and then I talk a little bit about a chapter about the newsfeed. So when this book gets rewritten, we’re going to talk about LinkedIn live.

We’re going to talk about events, we’re going to talk about native video, we’re going to talk about now even company pages can write articles. Instead of just on the profile, we’re going to talk about how to promote your events and your LinkedIn lives and we’re gonna talk about newsletters. Which is the new publishing platform. And of course, the first chapter will be it’s all about your foundation and your profile, so we won’t forget that.

Pamela Bardhi
Tracy, thank you so much. You’re a rock star. I can’t wait for 2.0 to come out that should be soon yeah.

Tracy Enos
Well, it’ll probably be twice the size so yeah. I mean, this is the five steps we’re gonna have a little bit different approach is still going to be LinkedIn publishing profits, but we’ll have a different sub-headline. You know, I haven’t figured that out yet. But they’ll definitely still be a system in here. Definitely.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that but to ask you my favorite question. Favorite question. You ready for shoot? What would your older self tell your younger self based on what you know now?

Tracy Enos
It’s about failing forward fast, It’s just don’t be the perfectionist that you are, trust me. I’m an organization girl, I mean I’m not to the point where you know everyone has to be facing and that I’m not that in all about things. But when it comes to my business, everything seems to have to be perfect before you pull the trigger. And that’s what I would tell my younger self. That is one of your fatal flaws that you got to work on immediately. We all have our superpowers and well over fatal flaws. So if I would recognize that fatal flaw a long time ago, I’d be a lot further along than I was in a lot sooner.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that Tracy. And now, what’s up in your world in the next six to 12 months, what’s happening?

Tracy Enos
Well, besides the book, that’ll be a big launch, we are launching a digital program since 2015. We are going to be launching the ultimate LinkedIn profile framework, it’s going to be a digital course. And it’s going to go through that profile that foundation work from A to Z. That is the one thing that’s responsible for myself and my clients and millions of dollars of new business. Podcast interviews and speaking engagements and so it all starts there. I know a lot of folks do programs at all about LinkedIn, but trust me, LinkedIn is overwhelming.

There’s a lot of buttons and a lot of bells and whistles, but you don’t need to do it all to make a good healthy six plus figures. And so it starts with foundation and what’s cool about it is we’re throwing in a bunch of really great bonuses. So that you can get a jumpstart on your marketing after your profile is complete. Because we’re going to be adding incrementally some more over the next 12 months.

We’ll do a full Sales Navigator training on prospecting. Then we’re gonna do a whole thing about content and using content to generate business development and new leads branding and new leads. And then we’re going to talk about what I’ve been so successful with. Probably more catered towards business people who have a big services or whatnot and including authors or consultants. We’re going to talk about using LinkedIn to find podcast interviews. Like you and I found each other doing that podcast interviews and getting speaking gigs, all from just LinkedIn.

Pamela Bardhi
Amazing. Your total rock searches. I’m so excited for everything that you’re launching. Now you got to let everyone know where to find you so they can see all these amazing launches and all this awesome this?

Tracy Enos
Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. Figure right now. I’m was the very first Tracy Enos on the platform in 2009. And I think if I haven’t checked lately, but I’m still the only one with a photo. Find me at Tracy Enos on LinkedIn, that’s Enos. If you are a Dukes of Hazzard fan, then it’s enough for you to hazard if you’re a little older and you’re a St. Louis Cardinals fan. It’s been a slaughter. So that’ll help you remember that.

Pamela Bardhi
You’re amazing. Daisy, thank you so much for being here today, sharing your story and all the awesomeness that you’re up to. it was such an honor.

Tracy Enos
Well, thank you, I got one more thing to look I’m gonna get I’m going to give your audience a gift. I will do that. We’re going to give the gift of this book in PDF form so you don’t have to buy it. And we’re going to give you my updated 28 Point profile checklist. How cool is that?

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah.

Tracy Enos
All you guys have to do is go to the ultimateprofilechecklist.com

Pamela Bardhi
Thank you so much, Tracy. So anyone who’s listening, please, please please sign up for both of those. Tracy is an absolute Rockstar in her world. And this will transform your presence on LinkedIn and everywhere else and then you can connect with her for all her awesomeness that she has coming up. Thank you so much Tracy for offering that to our guests, thank you.

Tracy Enos
Thank you, Pamela. Wow, this was fun today.