Joe, Frankie, the third, tell me about your vision.
My vision is to try to help people get where they want to go.
Most people know where they're at.
And a lot of people know exactly where they want to go.
And what I found is your own mind, your own psychology
keeps you from getting what you want.
And over the years, I've kind of developed a way to help people
if they know where they are and know where they want to go,
then there's a way to build a LinkedIn bridge to get them
from where they are now to where they want to go.
And, you know, in some cases, that bridge, you know, they say,
well, what do I have to do to get this?
I said, that's what you really want.
You need two more years of college.
You know, so the the the benefit of all this is,
you know, I've had a lot of experience developing people,
so I kind of know exactly what you need to do.
Ten years in executive search, you know, hunting for people,
for organizations.
And based on all this experience, what I found was
most people under merchandise themselves.
In other words, they bring way more to the table
than they put out there.
And in today's world, if you can't be seen,
you know, which which is basically a search,
then nobody is going to call you.
And if nobody calls you, you don't have anything.
So that's my vision.
I love that you're you're bringing together
the dynamics of the your tenure, right?
You got this unfair advantage, Joe, in life.
You've been around for decades.
All right. And you know how to leverage that.
You've got military training background and helping leaders in that space.
You obviously got corporate background.
I can tell that by the filing cabinets that you have, you know,
that you have the patriotic background.
There's there's so many different values.
And you you seem like a kid in a candy shop on these podcasts now.
You know, you're like, wow, there's a whole opportunity here
to influence in a totally different dimension.
Where did the vision come from to transition
from the historic background of your leadership skills
to to modernizing it the way you're you're doing?
Well, it came I was I got on LinkedIn about one year after it was created.
LinkedIn was created in 2003 and I was on it in 2004, you know.
And when I first got on it, I thought it was going to steal my identity.
You know, right.
That far back there, you know, you thought, oh, well, it's just going to steal my identity.
You know, but, you know, I could call somebody.
I could call the head of marketing and talk to on LinkedIn and get various ideas.
In fact, trying to get military people to join LinkedIn at that time frame.
I got LinkedIn to make me a PowerPoint slide deck that showed them
that we really weren't stealing their identity.
Wow. The purpose by putting this data out there, I still have it.
It's 2006 slide deck.
But when I was working on
did you get to meet Reid Hoffman in the process?
Just curious.
No, but some of the early people that were
the early people that started LinkedIn came from eBay.
Yeah. You know, and and then, you know,
that crowd kind of transitioned out to other opportunities, you know.
Absolutely.
You know, because there was new things happening all the time.
And so
it that was the the wild west time of bringing things up.
But I found that I was working on a project in China
to do wastewater treatment infrastructure over there for a Houston company.
And we were trying to find how do you find somebody that's got Chinese experience?
Well, way back when you had to go back to a search firm
and they had like, you know, 300,000 resumes and, you know, they,
you know, you pay money for that kind of access. Right.
And we did. And and we didn't get anything.
In other words, we paid money.
They said they gave it their best shot and anything.
Then LinkedIn came around.
And then I saw very quickly, you know, you could search for people
that had Chinese experience.
Well, they didn't have the experience I needed.
But I was able to contact them.
Yeah. And once I finally got in touch with them, I said, well, who do you know?
And they said, well, you know, Billy Bob and Susie Q, you know, they they've done that.
You know, why don't you why don't you talk to them?
And so it was it was nowadays that's almost digital. Right.
But back then, there were so few people.
But once you found somebody in your niche, you could find they knew
eight other people that work with them back in China.
And so what it became is a huge resource
because we didn't have to pay these big search firms to try to find these people,
you know, because this was the first element of being able to,
you know, look at stuff kind of across the globe almost.
And so I saw based on my transition into the private sector,
which was a disaster.
You think you know what you know, right?
And then secondly, you come out, you know, fairly senior and everybody says,
well, you know, you're you're in your 50s.
Yeah, you got three master's degrees in engineering degree, but, you know,
you're overqualified to be a project manager.
And so what I found out, you couldn't pierce the corporate veil.
But I did get some good advice at that time.
And somebody told me, look, go find some guys putting a deal together,
you know, on the front end where you can use your multifunctional,
you know, experience to help them out.
And then, you know, you're there kind of at the beginning.
And that was really sound advice.
And then secondly, I learned that LinkedIn as I was working with, I said, man,
I wish I had LinkedIn when I came out, you know,
because LinkedIn gave you the ability to do that.
Because LinkedIn gave you the ability to take what you did in the military.
Yeah. And lay it out there.
And what I was able to do with people, I said, lay it out on LinkedIn.
And then let's talk about it.
And then I would help them after I figured out how to do it,
that you needed to take your military experience
and what you brought to the table and put it in the vernacular.
Yes. Of hiring manager.
Exactly. Because if you use all these military words, I mean,
you know, the hiring manager doesn't know.
I mean, they want to they they want to help you.
But hey, this doesn't look like what I'm needing here.
You know, exactly.
I think one of the same that same principle, it applies to so many of us.
And and your your niche often gets out.
That's applies to stay at home.
Who's trying to get back into the workforce that applies to.
I mean, I was a point three, three GPA who transitioned to LDS missionary,
who transitioned home to business.
And, you know, I was fortunate to have some mentors who said,
you know, for that missionary work, put on your resume,
you know, regional sales leader of an international nonprofit organization.
Right. There's certain changes and adjustments that apply.
Well, you tell me about cells.
I mean, is it harder to sell, you know, a gym membership
or sell God in a foreign language you don't speak to an 80 year old atheist?
Yeah. Yeah.
That's so that's a high parrot.
That's a high powered cell.
That is absolutely.
So when we when we learn to, you know, gravitate towards leaders
who can help us recognize opportunities to
to adjust our language, not just who we are, not just our story,
but adjust the value of the story to the person we're trying to communicate
with, amazing things can come out of that.
And you're an expert in that.
So that's that's a lot of fun.
We've I'd love to dive into a few more, but I do have to get ready for another show.
The I think I'm going to ask one more, though, if we can keep it clear and brief.
It'll be powerful and then we'll shelve the rest.
So Joe, Frankie, the third, where are you going with your vision from here?
Where am I going with vision?
I'm going to continue to do this. You know, the first half of,
you know, your life is one big football game.
The first half is about success.
It's about getting the house, getting the kids,
getting the kids through college, doing, you know, launching everything.
Then you go into the locker room and OK.
All right. What's the game plan to win the second half?
And I think it's a little bit more about significance.
OK. How can you, if you want, continue to bring in revenue?
But how can you help other people?
What are your gifts?
And if you can find those gifts, how do you use those gifts?
And what I found my gift was the ability to career develop people,
listen to them and be a sounding board for that stuff and kind of give them a reality check.
Absolutely. We live in such a phenomenal age.
Those of you who are younger than Joe and I, I read for our work week years ago.
I was I was young in my career when I read that and realized, wow,
what if I just started living for my legacy today?
You know, instead of waiting, you guys have the opportunity to do that.
Those of you who are 80 years old listening to this, you can start now, too.
You don't have to wallow in self pity that you missed the boat.
You missed the boat. The boat's still here. Come and join us.
Let's make the most of this life.
And Joe Frank is here to help lead the way.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.