Transcript
Richard: Welcome to the Bravo Charlie Club podcast, making you 12 and a half minutes more awesome each week. He's Ben, I'm Richard. Let's go. ben how are you doing this week?
Richard: 6-0. Woo-hoo!
Ben: Going really well, mate. Episode 60. Can you believe it? We've made it.
Richard: Albania. Awesome.
Ben: Well, yeah, we're here.
Richard: oh
Ben: Hey, new listener country call out. Can you believe it's Albania? Now, I don't know you handed me a globe, I would confidently put my finger on Albania.
Richard: help bun yeah
Ben: But for our but Albanian friends, the the greeting I need to share is Pershing Detya, which is exactly right, I'm sure of it.
Richard: think I think it's 100% accurate.
Ben: It's got those omelettes, I think, over the E, so I'm just going to have to run with it. Welcome to Albanian Friends. Really great to have you on board. Hey, the Fully Awake project this week, mate.
Ben: Originally, I had planned to teach our listeners this great hack about how you get rid of, you know, yeah when you sign up to LinkedIn and it gives you like your Ben Flintoff XFG473Q.com.
Richard: Mm-hmm.
Richard: Oh, yeah, yeah. 770395. Yeah. All right. i yeah
Ben: and And you can get rid of those letters and numbers. It's actually quite easy to do. But then i was thinking, what even is LinkedIn these days? Like, what's your take on on this this surface?
Richard: I don't know. i don't know. I can't answer that question. i think it It feels to me a bit like, you know, the end of Scooby-Doo, that cartoon where, where you know, Shaggy's there and he's unmasking who the villain is and he pulls the help the the hood off and it's someone else and he pulls the mask off underneath that it's someone else.
Ben: Yep. Yep.
Richard: I feel like LinkedIn's trying to become Facebook and Facebook's trying to become TikTok and, like, they're all trying to become – something else and so yeah I don't know do I even know half the half the connections in my LinkedIn i i I probably don't I've certainly never met them
Ben: what's What's under LinkedIn's mask?
Ben: So let's rewind then. when When you first started on LinkedIn, like my my plan was I never accepted an invitation request unless I actually knew the person and and they were probably in my phone and I could call them, right?
Richard: yeah have right totally
Ben: So, and yeah.
Richard: And you curated your CV, you put some effort into it, right? You got the dates right and all that sort of thing. It was it was the system of record, right?
Ben: Yeah. And and now, i don't know what my connection count is, but there's no way I know more than 10% them. It's just... Maybe 15%. It's a funny world, like because you're like, okay, well, I'm only in an online environment. Maybe I should be accepting some of these connection requests. But then it just completely changes your feed.
Ben: You know, the the the LinkedIn suggestions that you get, you know, and the the people that it's suggesting you to connect with based on people who you didn't know that you previously connected with.
Richard: Yeah.
Ben: it's It's not...
Richard: Don't you also like love the the you left that company five years ago and someone just started there like, you know, 18 months ago and they're sending you a connection request?
Ben: You probably know each other.
Richard: like
Ben: Yeah.
Richard: You started work.
Ben: Yeah.
Richard: I left there three, four years before you started there.
Ben: Or that on steroids is you know, that university you went to 35 years ago. Well, this person's just started that.
Richard: Oh, the alumni thing. Isn't that awesome? Yeah.
Ben: and
Richard: This person also went to Grimm's university as well.
Ben: Yeah.
Richard: Yeah. Fantastic.
Ben: You probably know them.
Richard: Fantastic.
Ben: Oh, goodness me. Do you get random emails from them?
Richard: And you know, know, from LinkedIn, well, I get the, I get the, I get the ones that, that come that look like they're a connection request.
Ben: Yeah, like saying... Yes.
Richard: But when you read it detail, it's like, how about you connect with this person?
Ben: Yes.
Richard: And you're like, okay, they didn't actually send that. That's just LinkedIn sending me a cold email to connect with someone I don't know based on based on some matching algorithm in the background.
Richard: Like that that's that's kind of like, is that connection spam?
Ben: Yeah.
Richard: Is that like, I don't know what that's good.
Ben: I think it is. I've got a theory.
Richard: It is.
Ben: got a theory.
Richard: It's sneaky though.
Ben: you know You know how you get that, i think, you know, the paid the paid subscription, the premium feature, and you get a gold badge or some something.
Richard: It's sneaky. Yeah.
Richard: Oh, LinkedIn premium.
Ben: I think they're basically just trying to justify the subs. You know, we pay us this money and we'll help you grow your network. And all it is is just fake emails going out.
Ben: So there you go. We've landed on it. I'm not giving people suggestion on how to get rid of numbers and letters from your LinkedIn URL because I think LinkedIn is full of it's just full of salespeople now.
Richard: Yeah.
Ben: I mean, what's your daily feed like?
Richard: What is, isn't it right?
Ben: What are you being sold?
Richard: If you, No, you you so you scroll through that feed and the people that are that that are posting every day people who are trying to sell something on on LinkedIn, whether it's a course on how to do LinkedIn better or whether it's a whether it's a you know so some kind of, yeah, direct you, drive you to a YouTube channel where they're doing some other thing. like But yeah, it's it's outreach.
Richard: It's it's a sales outreach. Yeah.
Ben: The conundrum for us is our main source of marketing for Bravo Charlie Club is LinkedIn. And I'm going to put up a snippet of this chat and and see if it sufi gets interrogated by their their spam filters and and blocked.
Richard: Oh, if you can't beat him, join him.
Ben: I'm sure we'll get blocked. your Your video has had three views.
Ben: Which is just me checking if it's actually working or not.
Richard: You know, I did have a piece of cold outreach once that I thought was so good that I actually complimented the person that said it.
Ben: There you go.
Richard: And so i'd i'd so I saw a post. it was It was three or four paragraphs. It was it was on topic. It was quite in-depth, not AI-generated.
Richard: And i I replied. I put a sort of a thoughtful reply in. And someone reached out to me with with a cold email saying, quoted parts of the of the reply and they sort of said, yeah, I kind of see where you're coming from.
Richard: We sort of think about this a bit differently. Here's the link to the company, you know, no no stress, no sweat. and But it was good. It was on topic. it was interesting. I clicked on the link. I went through to his site.
Richard: I had a bit of a read of it, put a few comments in an email and sent it back, congratulating him as well on the...
Ben: There you go.
Richard: Awesome use of the cold outreach, which which I think was good because most of them don't don't read anything.
Ben: Yeah. Well...
Richard: They haven't looked at the thing. They're like, hey, are looking to increase numbers in your podcast? We can get you up to, you know, X thousand listeners per month. Dude, you're just going to spam everyone.
Richard: I'm not interested in that.
Ben: Yeah, yeah, pass. That's not who we are.
Richard: Pass. Pass. Yeah.
Ben: we We want them in the inner sanctum, that's for sure. come Head over our WhatsApp channel. The links are in the show notes, folks. Hey, no listener feedback this week.
Ben: Does that mean we're perfect?
Richard: It must be. It's the only logical conclusion.
Ben: it's It's the only conclusion I could come up with too. So i'm going to flip it The travel tip of the week this week is not a travel tip of the week. It's a travel question.
Richard: Yes.
Ben: It's about world travel, and I want our listeners to to write in or text us or message us as well. World travel, what makes a great holiday and how do you choose where to go? So over to you, mate.
Ben: What makes a great holiday for you?
Richard: Yeah, so I could... In our family, for a family holiday, I'm taking it family rather than an individual. So as a family holiday, we sort of split it up into thirds, roughly. There'll be some leisurely resorting. There'll be some sort of...
Richard: activity and a sort of a focused activity in the middle generally for a third and then there'll be sort of a third stooging where it's it's free stooging, free-form stooging around the city.
Ben: Stooging.
Richard: Like there's some great cities out there. Rome, for example, very stoogable. You can just roam around Rome or, you know, London, all the big cities.
Ben: Yep.
Ben: Interesting. I like what you did there.
Richard: They're all stoogable. Thank you.
Ben: So how do you choose?
Richard: It's so stoogable.
Ben: so So how do you choose? Like, you know, the three categories. A resort, obviously, it's got to be, I guess, near a beach. Although, ironically, there there is a resort at Ayers Rock.
Richard: sometimes Yeah, yeah, I know.
Ben: Explain that one for me.
Richard: It's great. Actually, I was stranded there during COVID for two weeks.
Ben: me a
Richard: It's a bit long actually to be at that resort.
Ben: it yeah Yeah, it's probably a bit long. it It is a good resort though. I love the cook your own food on the barbecue outside.
Richard: Yeah.
Ben: thats That's cool. Go on. So how do you choose?
Richard: The destination.
Ben: Yes.
Richard: Yeah, it's generally somewhere we haven't been before. so so So it'll be somewhere new and different and we sort of all take a vote, roughly.
Ben: Do you? Are you pretending that you've got input into it
Richard: Is that why I never get where I want to go?
Ben: like
Ben: it? I'm not pointing fingers. like I choose where I want to go by by asking my wife where we're heading to. and And the reality is she's never let me down. We've been to some amazing places and and i' I'll definitely get my way. i' I've always asked for a resort holiday and never got one.
Ben: I get promised from time to time there'll be chances to sit by the pool or or be on a beach. But Tanya's got zero interest in sitting on a beach.
Ben: like yeah she So where wherever we're going, she's got to do a little bit of research.
Richard: She's a sightseer. She likes to get out and check stuff out, does she? Yeah.
Ben: So she's got some activities planned. And she and then she also plans some on the fly. Like when we're in Japan, A couple of the things that she did that she enjoyed the most, she planned when she was there, which which was which was pretty cool.
Ben: Actually, I asked the question, world travel, but really, like if you said to me, you could never travel anywhere again, you have to stay inside of Australia, I would actually be quite happy because Australia's got so many beautiful places and
Richard: yeah awesome
Richard: it's pretty big yeah
Ben: And it's so big, there's a variety of climates and geographies. And and I love to drive. Like driving from, you know, Brisbane to Adelaide was is no big deal.
Ben: I just, in fact, my best mate bought a car a couple years ago and it was in Brisbane and we had to drive it to Adelaide and we just saw it as as a fun couple of days.
Richard: Oh, the classic Aussie road trip.
Ben: Yeah. And, listeners unaware, we're talking about 2,400 kilometers, I think it was, in the old language, about 1800 miles or so.
Richard: Fantastic.
Richard: yeah
Ben: So yeah, it was a, it was a decent, it was a decent roll, roll through the, well, what Australia had to offer. We saw a lot of different terrains on that trip. yeah,
Richard: Yeah. again
Ben: We took the girls to Europe because we wanted them to see some things that we'd seen. And in fact, my one of my daughters had already been to Bali when her sister wanted decided she wanted to go to Bali. So...
Ben: She's now been to Bali twice, which is two times more than anyone in the family. So, yeah. it's a so So the question for our listeners, if you will indulge us, to write in. The links will be in the show notes, as always. Use the Inner Sanctum WhatsApp channel.
Ben: What makes a great holiday for you and and how do you choose where to go? We'd we'd love to share some of the feedback. Hey, you mentioned Rome earlier.
Richard: I did mention Rome.
Ben: It forms part of our conundrum of the week. let me Let me build this up for you. You're traveling through Ireland and someone says to you, would you like a Guinness? And your response is, well, when in Rome?
Ben: And I'm like, no, we've just established that you're in Ireland. Why why do we say when in Rome when we're not actually in Rome?
Richard: I'm just kidding.
Ben: What's that all about? Yeah.
Richard: Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting, isn't it? When in Rome, it's part of the vernacular, one of those things for blending in with locals or something.
Ben: So do you know the history?
Richard: I don't know. Maybe maybe it was because of of the expansion of Rome throughout Europe. I don't know. of The Roman Empire, maybe.
Ben: the Rome is one of the great dynasties. There's no question. or empires Empires, sorry.
Richard: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. I think it is. Yeah.
Ben: So you've got nothing to to share? So when in Rome, it's just an accepted phrase, right?
Richard: Not really.
Ben: You're like, oh, well, you know, I'm here, I might as well do it.
Richard: yeah
Ben: This is what's expected of me. And it's a...
Richard: okay i'll have you it was a tough sell
Ben: I
Ben: oh i mean, I would just say when in Dublin. like who Okay.
Richard: yeah true don't you love that the guinness building is actually the tallest building and but it's probably not now because 25 years ago since i've been there but like the guinness building used to be the tallest building in dublin right
Ben: All right, well...
Ben: Is that right? Yeah. And it's probably not that high. What are we talking about?
Richard: No, I think eight stories, six, eight stories, something like that, I think.
Ben: How big could it be? Yeah.
Richard: It was a rooftop a rooftop bar, predictably.
Ben: Yeah.
Richard: Yeah, it was awesome.
Ben: Yeah. What a surprise.
Ben: The Irish having somewhere to to drink. What a surprise. Hey, that's it for our listeners. Thanks for joining us. Listeners have been BCC'd on our week. We'd love to hear you. Please share us to what makes that great holiday and how you choose where you're headed.
Ben: In next week's show, we're going to ask, can car GPS navigators make things up? And I have an example to share. See you next week. Bravo, Charlie Club. Out.
Richard: And that's the pod.
