The CONNECTION MATTERS Colum

Hi! I’m Sophie Lechner. Welcome to The CONNECTION MATTERS Column

My goal for this column is to help YOU in accomplishing your big mission and in attracting clients so you can continue your important work. 

First let me introduce myself.

Photo of me in a pink tee-shirt and a necklace I made!

I help mission-driven entrepreneurs to find their audience on LinkedIn and engage with them so they can spread their message, share their gifts and grow their income.

Even though I’ve been on LinkedIn for over 20 years (basically from the moment it launched), it wasn’t until March of 2020 when I fully realized how much LinkedIn is a black box for most small business owners. This eventually led me to create my business as a LinkedIn Coach for mission-driven entrepreneurs. 

But let’s back up for a minute…

My 20-Year Love Affair With LinkedIn

I have 25 years of experience working in global roles for Fortune 50 companies in Paris and NYC. When LinkedIn launched it felt as though it had been created just for me and it quickly became my second home. 

Growing up I was always surrounded by my French and my Pakistani family intermingling, along with my parents’ international friends and those interactions always created a spark that energized me, emotionally and intellectually. I also witnessed my parents’ problem solving to bridge their vast cultural differences, which established a model for my worldview. 

So LinkedIn felt like a playground for me to continue to grow that very same world for myself. 

I used it daily to connect with my colleagues, friends and family around the world and to meet new people I thought sounded interesting. I discovered and played with all the new LinkedIn features as they came out. Over the years I have made new friends, been invited to speak in several countries, and was interviewed for a Forbes article.

When I left corporate and founded my own company, I built the business almost ENTIRELY using LinkedIn: I developed partnerships in several countries, hired an intern, and assembled a faculty of over 100 experts around the world to better serve my clients.

“Help us! How are we going to find clients now?!?!?” My fellow entrepreneurs howled in pain as the world shut down in March 2020.

At first I was surprised by this question (given my familiarity with LinkedIn) but I flew to the rescue, getting on calls with entrepreneurs to help them use LinkedIn to get clients. That’s when I discovered not everyone else had “grown up” with LinkedIn like I had! Word got around and I helped dozens of entrepreneurs. This was very rewarding, at a time when the world around us was pretty dismal and my own business was at a standstill.

And the Results Blew My Mind

• I helped a budding coach get from 0 to 500 connections in a few weeks

• I helped a consultant get several 5 & 6-figure contracts via Linkedin

• I helped an online course instructor get several hundred sign-ups for her summit

At first I resisted the idea of creating a full time business doing this. It felt too easy and too fun! (This was before I realized that your business should be easy and fun - but that’s for another column)

I created a 1-page offer and emailed it to a few people and it took off immediately! Later, I created an online course with the help of a renowned instructional designer and added features based on my clients’ needs.

A different approach

I quickly understood that clients were attracted to me because they saw that I was not teaching the classic tactics of most LinkedIn coaches (send 50 connection requests a day, send canned DMs… yuck). 

I bring a different approach, based on my values of curiosity, generosity and connection. 

I despise the bully marketers’ strategies that manipulate us and impose their tactics onto us as if theirs were the only road to success. The attitude and loudness of these marketers actually makes me angry and prompted me to launch the Marketing Mutiny project (more on that later)

The MAGNET Model is born!

I have developed a method for attracting your audience to you rather than having to constantly be chasing clients, and I call it The MAGNET Model. Hunting for the next client is exhausting, drains our positive energy and puts us in a scarcity mindset. With my approach you can engage on LinkedIn in a way that inspires and energizes you, and that will attract your ideal audience to you like a magnet. Instead of “just posting” and waiting to see what happens, 

you actually create a hub of engagement where your prospects can discover you and be excited to interact with you.

Why Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs?

I choose to work primarily with mission-driven entrepreneurs, for a couple of reasons. The first is that they are interesting passionate people who I enjoy interacting with and learning from and they enrich my life. Working with them allows me to be a part of something bigger than me and them. It also means that they are heart-centered and I appreciate that, and 

they come with a high ethical standard and a generosity of character which are paramount for me. 

And finally it means that because they are working toward a vision, something bigger than them, they are able to get out of their own way and surmount both limiting beliefs and also challenges with time and effort. 

Another reason for focusing on entrepreneurs on a mission is that they are the ones I feel I can best help. 

They have an important message to share with the world and it is critical to them to have an impact that is much wider, beyond their direct work with clients. 

They are looking for clients to support the sustainability of their work, but they want to reach a broader audience to spread their message and raise awareness of the topic they address. I will explain in a future column how my method is perfect for this type of work. For now, suffice it to say that LinkedIn is an ideal platform to support this type of work.

So that is the story of why I help mission-driven entrepreneurs to find their audience on LinkedIn and engage with them so they can spread their message, share their gifts and grow their income.

Creating a Movement

One of the things that happened to me along my entrepreneurial journey, and that I see happening to too many mission-driven entrepreneurs, is burnout due to misaligned marketing. 

We decide to pursue our mission but most of us don’t have the know-how to turn it into a business, so we begin to research the steps required to create an offer, price it, find clients, bring revenue and do marketing. Soon we fall into the net of some very savvy marketers who sell us their “formulas” for immediate success. We don’t know any better so we buy from them and find ourselves embroiled in over-complicated tactics that don’t align with our values. Because of this misalignment we implement half-heartedly, don’t get results because it’s likely our business is different from theirs anyway, and we end up confused, overwhelmed and having lost touch with our mission and certainly our passion. 

But there is another way and after having struggled for a while, a number of entrepreneurs have actually found a variety of ways to succeed in business without any of these shady tactics. 

I want to bring these different, more aligned and humane strategies to as many entrepreneurs as I can. 

This is why I recently launched Marketing Mutiny to bring the stories and strategies of these entrepreneurs to you. You can find out more about the project here: https://themagnetmodel.com/marketingmutiny and you can watch this 3 minute clip where I explain why I am passionate about this. 

Because of the success of that initiative last April, I have decided to continue this work and give it a new home here, in the CONNECTION MATTERS Column.

Here’s my plan

I’ll be writing to you every other week. My goal for this column is to help YOU in accomplishing your big mission and in attracting clients so you can continue your important work. 

In order to do that, each month I will dedicate one my columns to bringing you a contribution from an entrepreneur who has created strategies to attract clients that are ethical and values-based. This will provide inspiration and role models for your own marketing, and you will be invited to join the conversation in the private Marketing Mutiny LinkedIn group so you can dig deeper as you apply what you learn. 

I will alternate this with a column where I share my views on using LinkedIn to propel your mission and find clients, along with tips, how-to’s and ideas to help you leverage your LinkedIn activity. I will also answer questions you submit here or that I get from clients. 

AND… I reserve the option to bring you other goodies when I feel called to! 

See you in the next column!!