We were lucky to catch up with Lindsey McMillion Stemann recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lindsey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share a customer success story with us?

Thank you for the invitation to join you. I love sharing this success story. Taylor Davis is the Founder of DFG Advisory, a top Northwestern Mutual firm. He and his team are the kind of people who always put others first. From the moment you meet him, it’s clear Taylor truly cares about helping his clients succeed.

When Taylor and I connected, I could tell he was talented. But his online presence didn’t showcase his knowledge or passion. This mismatch between who he was on LinkedIn and who he was in real life began to hold him back from reaching his target market.

“Now, I spend most of my time with high-end executives who are consequential decision-makers in the executive space for the companies that they serve, and we’re working on all these complex problems,” Taylor said. “But, that type of prospect does not connect with a sloppy LinkedIn or online presence. They do not connect with a rag-tag outreach strategy that I was using before.”

Taylor’s business has taken off in the past several years. He’s absolutely crushing it, and I couldn’t be prouder of him! Let’s take a look at the challenge Taylor overcame, how, and what it has meant to him—not just on the business side, but also in his personal life.

*The Challenge*

Back in 2019, Taylor’s business was far from failing, but it also wasn’t thriving. He was working so hard, yet he felt like his outreach efforts were constantly met with closed doors.

“You’re told all the time that you’re going to get no’s, but when it feels like you’re only getting no’s, it’s pretty frustrating,” Taylor said.

He started feeling a bit down about the future of the business. How was he going to build it, especially in an increasingly digital age?

“I’m in Lexington, Kentucky, and even here locally people meet online, people look you up online, and if there’s a crack in the castle, it’s an easy out to not meet with somebody,” Taylor said.

He recognized, rightly, that he needed to do something about his LinkedIn presence. A haphazard strategy just wouldn’t cut it anymore. He was ready to learn and put it into practice right away.

*The Strategy*

Our approach to Taylor’s challenge started the way all great LinkedIn strategies do—with the LinkedIn profile. We took a careful look at how he was showing up and how he might begin to tell his story differently.

“When a prospect looks at the financial services world we all look the same,” he said. “What [Lindsey] really helped me do was figure out what differentiates me in the marketplace.”

This philosophy—identifying your “only” factor—helped Taylor develop a more curated approach to prospecting. Now, when he sends a connection request or gets introduced through another client on LinkedIn, he’s prepared to communicate how he and DFG Advisory are different.

Taylor was a model student, applying what he learned consistently and playing the long game.

“It’s not just a one-time fix, it’s not some special medicine that’s going to fix it overnight, but it’s really a process to slowly evolve into a better version of yourself online. When you can take that to market, you can truly be attractive to good prospects,” Taylor said.

Once he got his profile in a great place, he started focusing on the way he communicated with prospects. Soon enough, he saw results. Big ones.

*The Win*

In the first year, Taylor’s production more than tripled from $70,000 to $220,000. Then, in the next year, he committed to the process even more. This time, production at the firm jumped to $1.8 million. Quite an impressive jump!

DFG Advisory’s growth has continued in the past couple of years. With tried and true LinkedIn strategies under his belt, Taylor said he feels like he has all the wind under his wings and can keep growing.

‘The old me would have been sitting here going, ‘Okay, I have a one-month-old at home. I have no consistent new client acquisition strategy. My online presence is not very good. I’m going to have to fight tooth and nail just to make it month to month.’”

After doubling down on his LinkedIn strategy, Taylor said he has peace of mind knowing he has a process in place that works. He finally has the freedom to spend time with his family and still crush it at the firm.

“Now, I don’t really have to worry about it because the machine is consistently working. Whether I’m at a pediatric appointment or I’m home with my son, I know that the machine is working in the background to continue filling that pipeline.”

I’m so glad I was able to propel Taylor’s LinkedIn wins. Here’s to many more years of growth and supporting consequential decision-makers!

Lindsey, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Growing up, I watched my dad start his own company and I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that you can get paid to help people. What a gift!

I launched the first expansion of a small consulting business and after 3.5 years of honing my craft, it was time to part ways to start my company. That’s definitely the abridged version, but the point is that I was fortunate to have several years of developing a skill set (i.e., sales, speaking, training, writing) that gave me the confidence to go out on my own. I will always be grateful for those years before launching McMillion Consulting.

The lesson? You never know what life has in store for you. To borrow a page out of Dan Sullivan’s book, take every opportunity to make your learning greater than your experience.

If you know an entrepreneur who has had a smooth road, I’d love to meet that person! From rejection and getting told no (a lot) to losing key team members in less than thirty days, oh and let’s not forget the roller coaster that can be your personal life in certain seasons, it wouldn’t be life as an entrepreneur without getting a few bumps and bruises along the way. I don’t see those obstacles as setbacks though. Do they hurt? Absolutely. But it’s in those hard experiences that I’m able to tap into my resilience and creativity in a way that is actually more difficult to access when things are going really well.

As a credibility consultant, I focus on using LinkedIn as a business tool with professionals and their teams to help them drive revenue for their businesses. From supporting individual financial advisors, Fortune 100 companies, and boutique advising firms, to speaking at global conferences, I provide practical teaching which leads to actionable learning to yield results for my clients. My team and I love helping our clients win!

We equip successful professionals and their teams to take charge of their online reputation so they can confidently pursue and exceed their potential through LinkedIn. We do this through a few key ways:

• The Profile Transformer™, our five-step trademarked process where we do the heavy lifting of writing, designing, and launching your profile to attract the ideal target our clients want to do more business with (https://www.mcmillionconsulting.com/join)
• Keynote speaker at your conference and annual meeting (https://www.mcmillionconsulting.com/speaking)
• Free weekly tips via access to LinkedInsider (https://www.mcmillionconsulting.com/linkedinsider)

Have you ever had to pivot?

Recently, I made some big bets on new strategies, products, and tools to grow my business. I weighed my odds and did my research, but there was no secret hack that gave me complete clarity on what the future would hold. My investments in the business could pay off big time. Or, they could be a total flop. I had to decide to be done with trying to trick myself into thinking I could control every outcome and I went for it. (I hope that gives you some freedom too.)

After a year of building, launching, testing, tweaking, and investing, the results I expected did not come. I got to a point where I had to decide to pause the pursuit. While the outcomes were not what I planned, the beauty is that I can always pull the work that was done “off the shelf” and revisit it. All is not lost and all was not for nothing.

Here’s a lesson I keep learning and re-learning: You can’t possibly know all the facts before you make a business decision. Oof, let that sink in. In life and at work, we’re going to have to take risks. Instead of expecting certainty, we’ve got to get comfortable with a little ambiguity.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Reps. You’ve got to work with enough people, over enough time to build a reputation. From my experience, people are much more comfortable considering working with you when their friend (or acquaintance or someone they respect) has already gone before them. The time to build trust gets expedited when this occurs.

When you do not have the luxury of at-bats yet, it’s important to not be afraid to say yes. You won’t know who and how you can help people until you start doing it! On top of that, you won’t know what you enjoy most in those efforts as well.

I have tested so many kinds of engagements from custom scopes of work, to six-month retainers, to online courses, to project-based work, and more. Every offering has taught me something new and in the process, I’ve built my reputation of being a helpful expert for my clients.

Thank you so much for inviting me to participate in CanvasRebel. Feel free to reach out via any of the channels below!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mcmillionconsulting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/linkedinlindsey/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseystemann/

Image Credits
Stacey Gardin of Stacey Gardin Portraits