Transcript: Jason Alba, Jibber Jobber, Linked In

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jul 08

Howdy all…. For those that didn’t watch the video, or anyone who was so touched by it that they want to print it out, laminate it, and cover the walls of their strange litle room with it, we wanted to provide you with the transcript of our interview with Jason Alba.  I have pesonally learned so much from Jason about how to leverage social media, and what “hot fads” are realy not worth the effort at the time.

If you want to see the corresponding video interview you can check it out here.

We also have interviews wit Chris Johnson from SCI, and Eric Smith from Control 4 that we will be posting in the coming weeks.

JASON ALBA SEGMENT

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>> Steve Spencer:  Hi, everybody.  This is Steve Spencer from the Utah Tech Spotlight.  We’re here today with Jason Alba.  Or as I like to call Jason, because I’ve Jason for a while, Jason Cut the Crap Alba.

Jason, there’s so much buzz around social media and social networking.  And if you’re not careful, it’s real easy to waste a whole heck of a lot of time.

And one of the things that Jason is spectacular at is really sorting through that and figuring out where there’s value and how to really expand your network without wasting your time.  So Jason really has the yoda of valuable social networking.

I understand that you’ve recently written a book on one of the popular social networking platforms, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah, so in September I came out with “I’m on LinkedIn    Now What?”

And in January, I think, or February I came out with “I’m on Facebook    Now What?” With Jesse Stay.

>> Steve Spencer:  If somebody, especially right now, everybody is wondering about the economy and everything else, if somebody’s wanting to start to leverage of social networking, what would you suggest is one of the first platforms they should look at and maybe throw us a couple of pointers?

>> Jason Alba:  Are you looking at from a personal/professional perspective or a company perspective?  There are a lot of similarities but there are differences.

>> Steve Spencer:  I guess from a personal perspective, an employee who is maybe a little worried, maybe a little spooked, maybe just wants to hedge their bets.

>> Jason Alba:  Okay.  So I mean, obviously, from a professional perspective, I think you should have a LinkedIn profile.  That’s where professionals are.  Whether you’re in transition or not.  It’s like a business card on steroids.

Last I heard, I don’t know if this is an official number, but 27 million people on LinkedIn.  So it’s come a long ways in the last couple of years.  It’s becoming    it has become, I think, mainstream.  And there’s nothing wrong with having that profile on LinkedIn.

Recruiters, hiring managers, vendors, partners, customers, all these people might look for your profile in LinkedIn to see what your background is and how credible you are and stuff like that.  That I would say is the easiest lowest hanging fruit thing to do.

>> Steve Spencer:  It’s almost like your business card/light weight resume online, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah.  The thing about the slash light weight resume is there’s always these questions in the resume world, the objective statement, how many pages should it be, what format should it be in.  LinkedIn has this other kind of format that is what I would say probably the only other professionally accepted format for something like this.

>> Steve Spencer:  Now, this book really    and your involvement in guiding people in LinkedIn really is just a continuation of something that’s been a passion of yours for quite a while, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Passion is such a funny word.  I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about social networking.  But I started in the social space to market my own business.  So all of the stuff I had    well, before my books it was a website JibberJobber.  What I did, because I was bootstrapping this, because I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a marketing firm behind me, no marketing know how.  I basically started to go out into the social environments and try and find people that I basically could communicate my message to.

And I think I had some pretty good successes in that space, and I learned a little bit about the social space.  And then I started getting people that were saying, hey, you’re telling me to get a LinkedIn profile but what do I do now?  That kind of led into going more into the social space.

>> Steve Spencer:  Now, when we look at networking, and even removing the current buzzword, which is “social,” your own platform, your own product and your own company, JibberJobber, really is all about the not just the power and the value but really the necessity of networking.

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah, when you talk to networking people, a few things they talk about like is knowing who is in your network and how you know certain people and what the strength of the relationship is.

And one of those really key things that most of us are bad at, which is following up, these are all things that a typical CRM system would do, sales force gold mine act or something like that.

What I did with JibberJobber I took all the CRM concepts and married it with personal, professional career management and relationship management concepts for an individual.  And with the idea that, like, for example, if I worked for you and we have a sales force, when I leave in two years I don’t get my contact out of sales force.  That’s your company data.

>> Steve Spencer:  Right.

>> Jason Alba:  JibberJobber is the tool that I would have for the rest of my career to keep all of my professional contacts no matter where I was employed.  So it kind of transcends all the different jobs I might have between now and retirement.

>> Steve Spencer:  So when you look at JibberJobber, which is my own kind of personal    even beyond CRM, it really tracks not just who I know.  So it’s well beyond my own personal Outlook address book.

>> Jason Alba:  I would say so, absolutely.

>> Steve Spencer:  It tracks, okay, who have I been communicating with, what message did I communicate to them so that I can really go back and track the history and the relationship and how

>> Jason Alba:  And if you’re using a CRM you’ll be doing a lot of that same stuff.  On of the tings we did with JibberJobber, we took out sales cycle, sales jargon.  It’s personal/professional career management.  So relationships, target companies that I may ever be interested in dealing with, whether as an employer or a customer, vendor, whatever, I can track all of this.  And this is my personal relationship management, career management tool.

>> Steve Spencer:  So you started with JibberJobber.

>> Jason Alba:  Started with JibberJobber.

>> Steve Spencer:  And really started to help people build their own network, their own, not just to go out and find a job, but really to build their own safety net and career expansion program, right?

>> Jason Alba:  I’ve even gone as far to say I don’t believe in job security, but I call it a job security thing, because that’s really how people are finding jobs through their networks.

If you have a network and know what it is and know how strong it is and you know when you last followed up with somebody and you have their contact information, how powerful is that as opposed to sitting down and saying:  I need a job but I don’t really know anybody.

>> Steve Spencer:  One of the things that I found really interesting, because within my own company I’m very passionate about my employees networking and getting to know people.

It’s funny, because, initially, so many employees, if they’re happy with their job, feel like they’re betraying their employer if they go out start building their network.

>> Jason Alba:  I felt that way.

>> Steve Spencer:  I don’t want to imply that I’m unhappy with my job, but one of the things we have found is, when you expand the realms of your relationships, you know what, that not only teaches you things, which makes you a more valuable employee, but it makes you build relationships with people who now know about your company and it tends to drive more business into the company.

>> Jason Alba:  And it should.  Why can’t every employee be an evangelist?  And I think a lot of employers are afraid for that, because what it could lead to.

>> Steve Spencer:  Makes me of, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “The Butterfly Effect.”

There’s a scene where the guy has his plate in front of him eating his food, protecting it like this.  And one of the other characters says, you know, he must have spent time in prison because in prison you have to be really careful to guard your food or everybody else will steal it.  It’s just funny how many employers tend to feel that, I have to

>> Jason Alba:  And the employees aren’t dumb.  They know.  See, what you talked about is there’s a feeling of could I or should I go out and network.  The last company I was a general manager.  I thought if I went out and networked, even on behalf of my company, it was like I was cheating on my company.  Or cheating on my employees.

I was going to work every day telling my employees why it was great to work there, how could I think of going out and networking.  But I just didn’t understand the whole idea of real relationships.

>> Steve Spencer:  So JibberJobber, building your personal network; LinkedIn really taking that and taking one of the social platforms that’s been really widely accepted I think in the professional community been accepted really more than any other social platform.  And that’s led into a lot of what you’re doing now, even on top of and synergistic with those, which is a lot of speaking, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah, I’ve started doing speaking.  It’s pretty cool.

>> Steve Spencer:  So what are you seeing?  My understanding is that something you really started getting pushed for.  People were saying, you’ve got this platform that does this, you’ve got this book that tells me how to do that, there was demand as opposed to you going out and saying, hey, I want to cultivate being a public speaker.  What is the demand?  What have you seen people doing?

>> Jason Alba:  It’s only recently that I started telling people I speak.  By the way, I’d love to speak at your next annual conference.

But all the speaking arrangements I’ve had so far that were paid, like professional speaking, these are people that have found me online.  They either want me to talk about social networking in general from a professional business perspective, how do I make money with these online tools, what should companies be doing with facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and blogging and all these things you can do online.

We have no idea.  We don’t understand it.  We hardly have our own LinkedIn profiles.  So the biggest question, I think, would be how do you make money from these tools online?  But a lot of people, I’m amazed.  I was at a Silicon Valley, I was on a book tour and I was talking about facebook.  About 10 minutes into my presentation this guy raises his hand.  This is Silicon Valley.  He says:  Can you just explain what social networking is because I’ve never heard of that before.

>> Steve Spencer:  Really?

>> Jason Alba:  And I was like where am I?  Am I back in Utah?  I did not expect that question in Silicon Valley.  It reminded me, though, that so many people, you read about it.  You hear about it and people talk about linked in.  You’ll see their profiles on their e mail signature.  But there’s still a ton of people that have no idea what it is or why they should get involved.  I was speaking just a couple of nights ago at the National Speakers Association chapter in Salt Lake.  And there was, these are very, very sharp people.  And they’re small business owners.  They’re promoting themselves.  And I think social tools are excellent marketing channels for them to find new people, nurture relationships and develop their brand, right?  And a lot of these people have little or no social strategy.

They don’t understand what LinkedIn is or how they can actively use it as opposed to passively use it; the same thing with facebook and Twitter and blogging and stuff like that.  So there’s the question in general and then there’s the actual question of how do we get real business value out of it.

>> Steve Spencer:  Gotcha.  So anybody who is watching or listening or reading the transcription of our video today, if there are more interested in your book or JibberJobber or having you come speak, I assume jibberjobber.com is the best place.

>> Jason Alba:  Jibberjobber.com on the very top, you’ll see a link to each of my two books.  There’s a thing there called CEO Training, which is little one  to two hour webinars that I’ve recorded on various things.  And so you can pick any of those up. And then at the bottom there’s a Contact Us.

I’m actually going to put a hands on workshop at Salt Lake probably in the next month or two and spend about four or five hours going through all of these different tools and how to actually get utility out of them from a professional perspective.

>> Steve Spencer:  Wonderful.

>> Jason Alba:  So I’ll let you know when I do that.

>> Steve Spencer:  Thank you.  Hopefully I’ll be invited.

>> Jason Alba:  Cool.

>> Steve Spencer:  I guess one last question, just to wrap it up on a light note.  If you could choose any one move from a Kung Fu movie to be able to do in real life, what would it be?

>> Jason Alba:  I’ve always been    I’m not a Kung Fu movie watcher, but I’ve always been intrigued with Bruce Lee’s three inch punch.  I should start practicing that.  Three inches.

>> Steve Spencer:  Next time we meet.

>> Jason Alba:  Cool.

>> Steve Spencer:  Jason, thanks.

>> Jason Alba:  Nice to meet you.
[Laughter]
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