Had an interesting call with a potential client/partner earlier this week.
As per usual, we started out with the classic stuff – hello, how are you, what do you do, etc. etc.
As the conversation moved forward and it was clear there was some potential to work together, he said something that caught my attention.
In not so many words, he said he’d like the opportunity to work together because he’d been following me on Tiktok for a while and loved my honest, genuine approach to immigration.
Woah.
Keep in mind, this is for a b2b client/partner.
And the ironic part is that I run the Visto Tiktok account to attract b2c clients – aspiring immigrants. I figured, as many do (incorrectly), that “sophisticated business people” do not hang out on Tiktok.
I was wrong.
Somehow this solopreneur in Canada found my account, started following and over the span of a few months, I’d built up a ton of trust.
All from me recording 60 second videos from my couch – no fancy production, no dancing/trends, none of that typical tiktok stuff.
A few key takeaways that even surprised me:
- Tiktok is even more powerful than I thought to find any kind of clients – not just teenagers.
- Video is so powerful – it builds trust even better than text because people are seeing your face and hearing your voice
- If you’re trying to build a brand, business or both, you have to be putting out content. If you’re not, you’re cutting off your marketing and sales at the knees.
Anyway, so many people keep sleeping on the potential of platforms like Tiktok and LinkedIn – please don’t be one of them!
I had a second interesting call this week with someone who reached out to me on LinkedIn (noticing a pattern here?).
And it got me thinking about why I got into law, and how much things have changed since I first got into the immigration industry.
As a quick aside, building a presence online as a solopreneur and especially LinkedIn can yield so many benefits, and one of them is you eventually get people reaching out for a variety of (good and not-so-good) reasons.
Once in a blue moon, as was the case this time, someone reached out very politely asking for a quick chat because they’re considering a career change from tech to law.
I try to protect my calendar pretty well and usually don’t talk to random folks unless it’s business related, but it’s also nice to pay it forward to people who are friendly, polite and genuine (I’ve certainly got lots of help and advice from others along my jounrey).
Anyway, they were curious about what it’s like being a lawyer in Canada.
And I quickly told them that to learn more about that, they should take what I say with a grain of salt because I don’t do much traditional “lawyer work” anymore.
While I still have a small law firm with another partner, I spend most of my time building and selling immigration technology (over at visto.ai) – very little time doing legal work or lawyer stuff.
Some people love law, some people hate it. I think I’m in the middle.
I never really loved it and could sense pretty early on, even in law school, that I didn’t quite “fit in” with a lot of the stereotypical lawyers. That being said, I am happy I pursued it and love working where the law and tech collide.
That part I find a lot of fun, and so I consider myself very lucky.
Not sure if there’s a real lesson in there, but one thing I thought of was this: if you like something or are good at it, is there something else you can combine it with to really love it?
Maybe you like writing, and also love building websites, so you get into building content websites for people.
Maybe you love reading and trees, so you become a researcher for tree studies (Is that even a thing? What a terrible example…).
You get my point, I really need to wrap this up before we go further off the rails!
Have a great day, make sure not to miss my daily updates and lessons on my solopreneur journey, and keep grinding!
