Once upon a time, I got an email from my son, Mark, suggesting that I check out this new thing called LinkedIn. I joined on 2/4/2004. Several years later, I found out that I was actually the 197,161^st person to join LinkedIn. That made me curious. So, I looked at Mark Roberge (#36,253) and Pete Caputa (#7,346) to see when they had joined. Here’s why I joined. Back then, LinkedIn was suggesting that if I was connected to Pete, and I was connected to Mark, and Pete wanted to be introduced to Mark, he’d ask me for an introduction. Now, if I know them both well enough, trust and respect them enough, I’m gonna make that introduction knowing that they’ll both be professional and bring value to knowing each other. Now, honestly, like many early adopters back then, I didn’t do much with it. I was a face to face, belly to belly salesman that didn’t have much use for this fad called the internet. LinkedIn grew without me, but eventually I started using it more. Now, I’m on LinkedIn every day along with 200 million others.

Last December, Lori Richardson (#29,426) and I had a blog-versation about whether or not to show or hide our connections on LinkedIn. (We agreed to disagree.) I just read Lori’s article, “Top Mistakes Using LinkedIn for Sales – Impersonal Requests”. This isn’t a new topic and many that I respect have written on it before. Frank Belzer (#18,132,536) shared 7 rules in 2011. Trish Bertuzzi (#230,786) has written six articles with LinkedIn in the title and the aforementioned Pete ‘I’ve got LinkedIn seniority’ Caputa has 10 different articles mentioning LinkedIn. Casey Lockwood (#26,117,371) invited me to connect last October 16^th and wound up writing this article for my blog.

I thought that I wrote on this before, but when I searched my archives, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. So, here’s what’s on my mind? What is a consultant? How did they get to be one? Are they consultative?

What is a consultant?

Elaine and I went to see Silver Linings Playbook yesterday and as sometimes happens, I left with a great lesson. If you haven't seen it, I am not going to spoil the movie for you.

Updated for 2019!

I just re-read Frank Belzer's comment on my rudeness because I remembered that I wanted to reply to it. (Don't worry. He was very polite and I will be, too.)

Remember Bill Clinton's campaign saying, "The economy stupid!". This post is not about politics. It's about sales and sales rock stars.

Recently, a client that had hired me as a sales coach told me that I was not everybody's cup of tea, but that he was trying to acquire the taste.

Mark O'Keefe sent this recently.

For a long time, if you Googled "Rick Roberge", this was the only entry that you found that was me. Allison Chisolm interviewed me and wrote that article for the newsletter and I was just tickled that I was famous. Several years later, Dave Kurlan thanked me in the Acknowledgements when he published Baseline Selling and I thought that I was 'something else'! Then, in 2011, Paul Roetzer asked me if I would contribute to his upcoming book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint and I thought, "I have arrived." But, the truth is, not really. The world keeps moving.

I hope that I don't ramble and lose you in this post, but it's the result of a series of recent events. I just finished reading Dharmesh's article, "Failure Is Not The Worst Outcome, Mediocrity Is". He had several half-liners that really resonated for me as a coach. Read them slow. Let them sink in.