How to Stand Out on LinkedIn When AI Writes Everything (20,000-Post Ghostwriter POV) - w/ Shoaib transcript

how when I was 15 I was working in a job stacking shoes on shelves for like £4.70 an hour, right? And then my transformation is I've made £1 million in my own business and I'm the sole salesperson. Shoaib has written over 20,000 LinkedIn posts. His first real job came from a DM. And I got that job in the LinkedIn DMs because the founder was looking for someone to help with content and I was creating content. So that was purely accidental. So naturally I pulled up my own LinkedIn and let him tear it apart. Three questions and that's actually the entire audit.

By the end of this episode you will know exactly what to change on your LinkedIn to meet your specific goals as well as how to utilize that platform to get to the life that you seek. If people have seen you over a period of time, live, breathe and do the thing you say you can do. You can't replace that with a viral colour cell. Please join me in welcoming Shoaib Ahmed to the Ready Set 2 podcast. Without any further ado, let's jump in. Shoaib, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Very excited.

Just this past week I found myself in a conversation with my nephew who has just finished college. He just started his first job and we were just talking about career stuff and the cool uncle. I like to think that he goes to with some of his issues. Maybe he will disagree if he listens to this. But we were talking about how I have been posting way more on LinkedIn and it just came up organically. He was like, "Why have you felt the need to do this? Why should somebody do that?"

And I tried to share with him. I was like, "Your new opportunities open up or your network becomes bigger." But even when I was sharing those things with him, I knew that it wasn't really landing. Like I was not actually get through to him and then obviously we just started talking about other things and it fell off. But I kept thinking about that exact conversation. So somewhere along my journey, I went in just in this past year from feeling like LinkedIn is just the most drudge slop, just the worst website to be in where everybody is just being performative and it's just bad. To now, where I've been posting consistently, I've been seeing some real results. I've just made some in-roads, so to speak. All I wish to say, sorry for the big word salad there at the beginning, but from your perspective, as somebody who is a literal master

at this, why should somebody today that is not posting on LinkedIn that is not thinking about that at least consider doing so? First of all, is that something you think? And if so, why? Yeah, great question. It's definitely something I would encourage. I mean, just to give context to my story, which is like, I guess, the ultimate form of proof of LinkedIn working. I finished university with a good degree at a top university in the COVID job market, where on average here in the UK, 147 applicants apply for one graduate job.

So immediately, you're competing with other people who probably have the same degree as you and who have gone to just as great a university. So what differentiates you? And that's where your circle of influence becomes so powerful. LinkedIn is a great vehicle to widen your circle of influence and build an identity as somebody in your industry worth listening to. So it's great if you do lots of work behind the scenes within a company. Maybe you're building your own business on the side, but if you're not talking about that online and building in public and taking people on that journey, what you're doing is missing out on loads of opportunity, of potential contact, of reach and visibility, of key granular metrics like website clicks, signups to your mail English,

people filling our interest for a product launch, etc. So that's the most important thing here. LinkedIn is a vehicle that you can use to accelerate results in whatever kind of avenue you want to go down. So for me personally, it led to a business that is just or is about to make a one million revenue in less than four years. And I've signed over 250 clients through LinkedIn because a lot of B2B business owners live and hang out here. I've been invited to and spoken on at least 30, 40 stages in a room full of my target audience. Like, where else do you get that opportunity to be paid to speak to hundreds of people in your target audience and talk about whatever you find interesting? Podcast PR, media recognition, brand deals, direct clients, building a mailing

list, the list goes on. So that's why I say you need to be on LinkedIn. It's the ultimate content engine in today's day and age. I love the point that you made about it feeling like a lot of AI slop at the moment and a lot of really kind of icky type of content that you don't want to see. And what I would say is this is an amazing opportunity to stand out because so many people now have a lowered barry to entry to create content. You don't have to be a copywriter.

You don't have to be a marketer. If you are able to use chatGVT or Claude or any other AI platform, you can whip up some okay content. The problem is so many people are doing that that the content isn't very good and it all looks the same. So if you lead with your personal brand and you're really baking your thought leadership, you're messaging your advice in stories and proof and evidence that immediately sets you apart from a lot of people. It moves you from being an educator on your topic or industry to being a practitioner and practitioners have proof of concept and they build believability in their brand. So when I'm creating content on LinkedIn, I'm not just saying, you know, here's here are five tips for this or here's how you can do this. I'm thinking

about, okay, how can I demonstrate my expertise through a particular example or a story or something I've lived and experienced and AI cannot do that for you. So that's a really good way to separate yourself at the moment. Yeah, I love what you said around the practitioner piece because again, going back to my nephew, he was like, what would I even post about like, like, I'm not an expert at anything. I don't know why anybody would want to read what I have to say. And yeah, that you just answered that piece of it, right? Like you're doing something at work. Obviously, you can strip away the elements of work that can land you in trouble. Like don't put out your private client lists on LinkedIn, obviously, but you can still share how you solved a difficult challenge. As you said,

I present proof that you've been doing cool slash difficult work. And then that's the engine to grow here, which then you can add to that the supplemental benefits of using chat GPT, right? Because once you know what you want to say, the how maybe can still be finagled with a little bit. Is that an okay approach in your mind? Or do you think the writing should come before the content or in terms of the idea itself? Yeah. Again, really good question. I think an idea, I mean, an idea typically comes from something you've done lived or experienced, right? So you have to have a strong point of your perspective and you cannot outsource your point of your perspective. Because that's why people buy into you and what you have to say.

There's, you know, millions of tools or products or services on the market. But the reason somebody's going to work with you individually is because they like and trust you as an individual. So your point of view and perspective is incredibly powerful. You can't outsource that. What you can do is use AI software to help you craft that post or learn the algorithm or get inspiration of ways you can share that message and so it lands. But you always have to edit that content, whatever is returned back, because AI is based on the law of averages, right? You put an idea in that it's going to give you the most common way of talking about that topic, right? And sitting in the middle, sitting on the fence is not going to build a powerful brand. You have to attract people but

also repel people. Attracting the right people, repelling the wrong people. You need to have strong opinions, point of views, perspectives and personality to do that. And that again, you can't really outsource. So I use it as a bit of a blend. I have an idea or I've done something in that day or in that week or I've got an email that I think, okay, this could be really interesting content. Then I draft a very rough skeleton of that post with the core details. I might then plug that into Claude, where I've given it prompts to learn my tone of voice and understand my target audience. I get that draft back. It's maybe 80% there. I'll then go in and edit and tweak it based on what I know will land with my audience, the way I talk like day to day. And I might even add

more little bits of context and details to add specificity into what I'm saying. So I think yeah, that's interesting because yeah, I didn't realize how I ended up here. But hearing you talk about that, I now realize that I have actually right now a very similar workflow to that, where yeah, in the beginning, and my beginning is only like two months ago. So by no means a veteran like you. But in the beginning, I just used to like control C, control V post, right? I was like, this is hey, this is good enough. But now I find myself actually sitting down, spending five to 10 minutes. And like, I think the beauty of this approach, and maybe you would have had a similar experience. But you find trends now. So I almost always find that with Claude, like the hook that

it starts with is almost always pretty bad. But a really good hook is like three lines in. And so I'll just, you know, bump that up to the top and remove the first two lines because they're like way, you know, true try hardy. But I love what you just said, because it's only through iterating that you start to pick up on these things. And then maybe even get to a point where Claude's first or final draft is 60% of the way in versus 80. And then that's where more of your voice comes in, your personality comes in. And as we know, that is what drives, you know, new folks or attracts them to you. So appreciate you setting that stage straight. Next up, where I want to go and what I wanted to ask you was around your incredible portfolio that you've built over the

years, you've had over 300 million impressions. And as you were saying, almost 11 million pounds, I think this is pounds in revenue, not that it matters. They're all like figures, right? They're all the seven, eight figures. So talk to me about that. I want to kind of go back to the beginning of your journey. What, when was that time when you first realized that I'm really good at this? I've been doing it for myself. Let's now go out and help other people do that.

Yeah, so I started working as employee number one in a copyrighting agency. And I got that job in the LinkedIn DMs because the founder was looking for someone to help with content and I was creating content. So that was purely accidental. I was creating content on LinkedIn because I enjoyed it and I just enjoyed studying algorithms and connecting with people. And to be honest, I was looking for a graduate job, not necessarily in copyrighting or branding or marketing. So to start creating content, I land this job, I do that for six months, about the same time I'm building my own brand. And this is really, really important. A lot of people think building a personal brand is only for an entrepreneur or founder or business owner. And it's not, you can use your

personal brand to get that promotion, to build a really lucrative network, to launch a side hustle, to add additional revenue streams to whatever you're doing. So I took that job and I worked there six months building my brand on the side. And eventually just got to the point where I had loads of people DMing me saying, oh, I'd love your help with my brand. And at that point, I was referring them to the agency that I was working for. And I just, it just got to the point where people said, we'd love to work with you individually. And I thought, okay, here's an opportunity, let's give that a go. And so I wrote a post on LinkedIn saying I've gone freelance. And by the end of month one, I think I had six or seven clients. And then by month three, it grown quite a lot.

And we were then pivoted into a limited company. And I think month six, I made my first full-time hire. And then the rest kind of like just accelerated from there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, that is so cool. Yeah, I think I love that you walked the talk, right? Like you were just talking about putting out proof. And yeah, like sounds like that is what led you to the starting point of, you know, this juggernaut that your brand has now become. And then going down that route further a little bit, when you have a new client, right, like say somebody reached out to you, you're like, sure, you know, let's figure this out. So you get on the discovery call, you I guess, you know, align on their what their goals are, I'm assuming for most people, it would be impressions, I guess

can you peel back the curtain on that? Like what is it that most clients that work with you are looking for? Most clients come to me and say they want leads and new business. And then I realize very quickly, a lot of them actually just want influence and visibility. Because it feels nicer, the quick dopamine. And I think you need a big, a mix of both, right? So if you don't have a reputable brand on LinkedIn, right, you're almost starting from scratch, it doesn't matter what you've done offline, because the people you might meet in a networking event, they're not the same people are going to be hyping you up on LinkedIn, right? So you might have an amazing small network in person.

But the real question is, can that translate online? And how big can you take it? So if you have an amazing business that makes millions in revenue, and you've been doing it for 20 years, that doesn't mean you're going to have an amazing brand on LinkedIn, you're still starting from scratch almost online. Because in your new platform, nobody knows who you are. There's no familiarity with you. There's no memorability. There's no content behind you that showcases your story. And therefore, there's no trust, right? People don't have a reason to buy into what you're selling, because they don't know who you are. So what I typically do is I have a growth sprint phase, which is all about building visibility and awareness. So the key way I measure this is

profile traffic from impressions, likes, comments, shares, how many people are seeing you on their feed? Are you, you know, is your messaging landing fast enough to get lots of eyeballs on it? Beyond that, is how do we nurture that audience? So that might be Lee's magnets, it might be building owned audience, it might be how are we tracking movement towards a particular landing page or a website? And then further down the funnel, if we look at it like that, would be the conversion piece, which is how many of those eyeballs and then mailing list subscribers or landing page clicks then turn into meetings booked or contract signed or new business clients.

Most people think you can just do one of those, the impressions piece or the conversion piece, and actually it doesn't work like that. You need to have all the parts of your funnel working, you need to bring in new people in at the top and, you know, people buy on multiple touch points, then very rarely just going to see one post or see your profile and invest in you. So you have to do the work beforehand to build trust, build familiarity, be personable and tell your story, so people feel invested in you and then they have that belief of, you know, I don't just like this person but I want to work with this person. That's a gap that you need to fill and content does that over time. So when you're newly working or I guess for the most part, do you work with

founder profiles in terms of the individual or is most of your work done on their brand page on LinkedIn? Or is it both? So all the work I do is on the individual profile to the personal brand. Because on LinkedIn, the reach and influence you can build on personal profiles far outweighs anything you can do on a company page. LinkedIn as a platform is pushing creators and content creators. And also if you have a particular face, it's more relatable, right? It's more human. If you're engaging with a piece of content with a company logo, you have no idea who's behind that and therefore that also caps what you can say. Because like founder led personal storytelling is way easier to build in public than it is to talk about a company in a vacuum, right? So

a lot of the work, well, all the work I do is on the personal profiles. And naturally you'll see an increase in company brand through the founder. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes sense, right? Because of course, nobody wants to follow a faceless corporation that's, you know, just a logo. So tell me this, this is a question I get sometimes. Does it have to be the company founder though, right? Because some people are just, you know, they're like, I don't know if I don't, I don't want all this clout. Can it be like a chief of staff or like the main person that's doing the work for the company? And then you use that to drive more business? Is that something that happens or not really? Yeah, absolutely. You're going to have a whole team of executives. I think that's

the most powerful stage of LinkedIn growth is when you have an entire leadership team talking about the company from different angles. You might have the chief marketing officer who talks about their go-to-market strategy, the cool branding stuff they're doing, the activations that they're launching. You might have the chief product officer who's a bit more technical talking about the updates and the features of the product and how they're adapting with AI. You might then have the founder talking about the story behind the business, the origin story and, you know, the vision, the ethos. If you combine all those things, you're going to have a way more powerful company brand at the top because you've got lots of angles into this ecosystem. That's what I call

like a really strong employer-led content engine. However, if you just have one individual doing that and they're not the founder, it's much harder because say a marketing manager, there's more limits to what they're able to say in terms of the business because they weren't there from the beginning, you know. They don't share that same passion and they don't understand the business from all angles in the way that a founder would. Also, being a founder carries way more weight.

So founder, CEO, business owner, there's more weight to the things that they say just clearly because of their position of seniority, right? So there's an element of additional trust that is baked into that. So that's that I would say is really important. You've got to have the person doing the shift has to be the one who leads with the brand because they carry the most authority in their voice. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And it's not something I had considered before.

So yeah, that's really cool. And in terms of how you can just exponentially grow by just roping more people in, but starting at the top and starting with people that actually have, you know, the authority on paper and in real life. Continuing from there, how much do you worry about like the algorithm quote unquote, right? Like it changed, it's now pushing carousels, it's now pushing GIFs, it's no longer pushing video or whatever. Do you, is that something that you actively track, measure and worry about? And are there, is this a reality of the LinkedIn algorithm or is it just way overblown and just kind of a rage beating for lack of a better term?

I don't worry particularly about the format. So whether it's video, carousel, text, image, I don't worry too much about chasing trends in that regard, because a trend will die and then you'll have to just start again from scratch. So what I typically do is think, am I building a brand narrative that is consistent over time around me and what I do and who I serve? That is way more powerful than thinking, okay, what's going to perform well on LinkedIn today, because what you end up doing is, is narrowing yourself down to work within the frameworks of what you believe will get impressions. So what's going to fit inside that carousel?

Okay, what can I record, like logistically, what can I record for this video? Whereas if you don't worry about the format, think, how can I create the best content that's really going to add weight to what I'm saying, but also build trust and belief in my worldview and also get people invested in what I have to say and my brand and business. And I think if you work in that way, you can create much better content with less constraints. Listen, the algorithm is always going to change, and it's going to get harder to capture reach as more people come on LinkedIn, especially with AI.

We're reducing that barrier to entry, there's more people posting, there's more people realizing, oh, there's an opportunity here, there's more people trying to build businesses about LinkedIn personal branding, because they've seen the explosive rise of the platform. But the one thing that you cannot buy or have growth hack or adapt with the algorithm is the trust in you as an individual. That comes through consistent positioning, the right type of messaging, and building in public. That is the ultimate way to build trust. If people have seen you over a period of time, live, breathe, and do the thing you say you can do, you can't replace that with a viral carousel. Yeah, I love that. I actually love that.

And I think part of the reason I love that is because it makes it is already like making me think that for me, what would that thing be, right? So do you have any ways of thinking or questions one can ask themselves to best figure out that my position, this is what's best for my position and this is what I should make content on? And then attached to that question, I also would want to, I just wonder, is it okay to have like a content flywheel or pillars in terms of like, these are the four things that pertain to me and I'm going to spray across all four of those things.

Can it be mixed, I guess? Yeah, so yes to both of those, right? So if we, let's go back to the first question, which was how do you find your kind of position in the narrative? So what I typically do with clients when I work with them, someone who I've never met before, and 95% of my clients I've never met in person, but I write all their content as their brain. So I really have to understand who they are as people and understand their story, their journey, the way they think, their point of view, perspective, opinions, etc. So the way I do that is I do a 90 minute research call at the start, and it's just me and an individual on a Zoom call, and I just tell them to tell me their life story. And it's a very informal interview where we start from when

they were a kid, and we, that's the only question I ask, which is tell me your life story. It's not even a question, it's a statement. And they will immediately go to the thing that interests them the most from their childhood, right? So that some might say, okay, I grew up in this type of environment, or when I was a kid, I really wanted to do this, or at school, I got kicked out before I got any qualifications, right? So they'll gravitate towards the part of their journey that really resonates. And then chronologically, I go through the years and I ask them, okay, tell me about the jobs you did, any like standout moments that you remember. When did you start your first business?

What was your first job? How much did you get paid in your first job? Tell me about that time when you this thing happened. So they'll tell the story, they lead the narrative. And I, because I've been creating content for six years, I've written over 20,000 LinkedIn posts now, for loads of different people, I can spot the content opportunities. So as they're talking, I will say, okay, that's really interesting. Tell me more about that thing that you just said. What I do over those 90 minutes and is take that call transcript. And I put together their brand narrative, because I've essentially got the entire life story in seven, eight, four pages. So I create that narrative of here's where they started. Here's where they exist today. Here's the ups and downs of their journey. And this is

the end result. Now what that creates is a really great, rich tapestry of life story and transformation, transformation is the ultimate way to build trust. It's like a post that I did where I spoke about how when I was 15, I was working in a job stacking shoes on shelves for like £4.70 an hour, right? And there was another job I had after that where I got fired from making, not hitting a sales quota, right? And then my transformation is I've made £1 million in my own business. And I'm the sole salesperson. So that was my kind of narrative arc for that one post, right? A very clear transformation before and after. Now what that does is it builds trust in me. I could have said here are four ways to make more sales. Or I could have said is where I started, nobody believed in

me. And this is what I went on and did. That is way more powerful. So this is what I mean by creating a narrative arc. And if you don't have the before and after and all the little bits in between that you can pluck and pull out and tell stories from, you'll lose any element of identity and what makes you different, right? So that's the first thing. You almost had to encourage everyone to do that exercise and sit with somebody on Zoom and get them to ask you that question and just talk about your life chronologically. Because what you can do then is plug that transcript into an AI software and say pull out the best content ideas here. And you'll get loads of stories really rich in detail and like specificity that you can then craft and rework into either origin stories, inspirational

stories, transformation stories. And also you'll be able to spot links between these things and be like, oh, maybe that's where my love for this thing actually started. And I've never told that story or maybe that failure that happened was actually the trigger for this thing. And then you can, you know, pull things together and tell amazing stories that that's how I operate with all my clients. And then the second question you asked, you're going to have to remind me, it was the fly wheel. Yeah, it's you kind of answered it already, to be honest. But yeah, it was that, can you have pillars and such 100% I would definitely recommend actually like creating your pillars from like, as part of your this exercise, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that exercise you need to do. But then

what I also need to do is think, what do I want to be known for? Because it's great telling stories about your personal journey, your personal life. But you also need to have something sticky that is like congeals around you and your brand, right? So it has to link to what you do or what you offer. You can't just tell personal stories about your life if you sell cybersecurity software, right? You've got to be that balance. So I can give you a real life example, because I onboarded a client yesterday. And I can actually share the pillars that we created and like what the founder does. So yeah, that sounds incredible. So I've pulled it up on my laptop. So if my eyes are wondering, that's why. So this is a founder who works in the AI space, right? He's essentially

building something very similar to Claude and perplexity and the AI infrastructure. Very, very credible, built and sold multiple businesses over the years, multi eight figure businesses, has failed a lot, has built a lot, advises companies, does loads of amazing things, right? So I did that call, we got his entire story and in that there's so many amazing stories that he's never even thought to tell. And then I pulled out the five pillars, right? So if he wants to sell software like Claude, perplexity, AI infrastructure to a enterprise company, so say he wants to sell his AI software to a company like Notion on Monday.com, right? Because then they can use that infrastructure to build their AI function. That's his goal. So what pillars did I pluck from

that are appropriate for him and his goals? I can tell you them now. So the first one was the founder's journey. And anybody can use this one, right? And this is the pillar that kind of differentiates that founder and positions him as someone who carries the weight of lived experience. It's that idea of being a practitioner and not just an educator. So in this category, we'd have personal stories, we talk about his failures, his pivots, the lifestyle transformation, his mindset, his life principles. And we'd also talk about his kind of venture building stories over the years, because that's all going to build trust and enrich that tapestry of his career. Yeah, the next pillar is like the AI native future of business. So this you can see we're kind of linking to what he's essentially is going to sell. So about it have his point of

view and perspective on how AI is creating structural disruption to SaaS companies or enterprise software. So we'd speak directly to his ICP and like plant the seed of him being a commentator and expert on that niche, right? Another one is building public. So how do we take everything that he's doing behind the scenes and talk about it in real time? So when this product launches, there's already anticipation built for it. So this would be it's not product marketing, it's more thinking about his like the infrastructure decisions, the principles behind what they're building, talking about the things that didn't work. So they've had to pivot. What that does, it creates excitement around the launch that is coming up. It also makes people believe in what

that person will eventually sell. And it gets buy in from people, right? People feel invested and anticipate what's coming. The other one is venture building. So that's the other pillar. So we talk about all the past businesses that are the current business he has, but we talk about things like growth culture, leadership, scaling systems, how to build teams. Because what that does, it moves him from just an interesting founder to somebody you want in your boardroom, to somebody you want to advise your company. So it's essentially building in public, using things from the past to extract lessons from and takeaways, to show the breadth and depth of expertise and knowledge.

And the fifth one is his podcast, right? He also has a podcast on the side. So we routinely share content from the podcast, which is also AI focused, which adds to his like, you know, being the thought leader on that space. So you can see there we have a mix of AI specific commentary and talking about themes within his space, but then also like his journey, his approach, his mindset, his story. And they're the five pillars, the founder's journey, the AI feature of business, building in public, venture building, and in the podcast.

So that hopefully gives you a live example of how to structure. Yeah, I think the most revealing thing about that list, at least for me, is the nature of differences in how they're structured. So they're not like we're not trying to, it's not like we have a blank canvas and we're painting just colors, like five different colors here. For me, what you just said almost sounds like we have a base layer. On top of that, we put in some like plaster of Paris or something like these are different textures, like they accomplish different things and they're not quite all the same, which is not something I had thought about because this whole time I was like, yeah, they just have to be five different sides of me, so to speak. But what I heard there was that,

no, like you're allowed to be really broad, like the founder's journey, like that can be pretty breadth first. But with other things, it makes more sense to be really niche heavy, which was in his case, the enterprise AI stuff. So that's really cool. And like, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that so much. Naturally, from there, when you're trying to post content now, right, so we figured out the what. So now, as far as the how goes, do you like just batch schedule?

Do you write on the day off? And maybe it's like two different questions, right? Because if I'm doing it for myself, what would you recommend for most people that are just individual? And then separately, I'm also just curious for because it's been so fun getting to know you, how you manage so many clients is so many posts, like what work streams do you use to do this? Yeah. So personally, I work in what I call campaigns. So rather than just posting on the day, whatever kind of comes to mind or whatever idea I have, I try to eliminate that because what typically happens is if you just wake up and think I need to post on LinkedIn today, you're going to follow the dopamine of what idea interests you the most rather than thinking, what is a type of content that I should be publishing that actually advances my brand. So if your campaign goal

is to sell a launch in two months, or if your goal is to have 50 people sign up to your event in 90 days, you need to work backwards and reverse engineer what that looks like. So then I would look at, okay, how do I build familiarity with new people to bring new audience soon? Then how do I talk about that launch in a way that isn't too preachy or product-led, but might position me as an expert on that topic so people trust what I have to say.

And closer to the launch, I might start bringing in more explicit promotion, and maybe offer-led content where I might talk about the product itself, I might offer free demos, I might share some case studies and testimonials. So you've really got to think of your entire sales funnel, so the brand awareness piece, but then the thought leadership piece, but then also you've got to sell as well. So how are you bringing offers into your content?

So I would work backwards and think, okay, I'm going to do a week of this, then I'm going to do a week of this, and build it that way. So you're not just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something lands, you're actually building a proper seasonal campaign just like you would with a product. If you had a physical product that was going to market, you'd have a proper marketing campaign funnel in place for it. And I think you should do the same with your brand.

That makes a lot of sense, yeah. And I especially like what you said that, yeah, don't wait, sit around waiting for inspiration to strike, because yeah, I definitely felt prey to that over this past year, despite my best intentions, I was not at all good with posting. And then it was only when I automated, well not automated, but like bath scheduled one post for like every week or so. These past couple of months, that's when I found that that habit finally started to compound. And now I start to feel a little bit more just because it's almost like a habit now, where I'm not relying on the dopamine of a good idea to post, it's more so just like, it's almost like intentionally not fully scheduled and such just because I that's where I am right

now. But it helps to know that at least I'm over the bad hump where you're just sitting around and waiting and obviously nobody wants that. So for our last section here, Shraib, I thought what might be fun to do was because I think you just mentioned you have a laptop in front of you, I would invite you to roast my LinkedIn profile, actually. And I say roast lightly, but yeah, I'm looking for my thing to just serve as a template, right? Because for anybody watching this, hopefully they're watching this section, because this would be hard to follow along just by listening. But they would be able to think of structurally and foundationally where their profile can be fixed, if that makes sense. So is that okay? Is that something you could do for

us here today? Yeah, 100%. Do you want to share your screen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be sharing my screen. Yeah. So give me just a second here while I do that. All right, so you should see my screen now. And I can zoom in so you don't have to. So that's me. Yeah, just and please be candid, right? Like this only works if we're candid. Cool. So I'm going to assume, because I think most people listening to this will have like a specific offer, or like most likely be a business owner with like a B2B style offer, or wanting to sell something, right? So immediately in the banner photo, what I would say is there has to be like an embedding of that offer in place, right?

Offer meaning what transformation are you selling to people and what are the outcomes of whatever it is that you deliver? So rather than it be, this is what I do, it's like, this is what you get. And this is, you got to sell the transformations, people don't buy the product or the service or the feature, they buy into the things that it gives them. So words like strategy, engine, story, I would like, I'd recommend you think about what does that mean for the end reader?

And you're like ideal buyer, what are they thinking? What did they want? Where they stuck? What are their pain points? What is their day to day that they find frustrating? So what's the cost of them financially on their business? If this problem doesn't get fixed, what does that look like and feel like for them short term and long term? And what is the cost of inaction, right? So if they don't act on that, what is the end result? And if you can twist the knife on that, make it feel very visceral and close to home. And that was incredibly powerful. Now this I'd also, this is not just your banner photo, by the way, I'm talking about this overall in the profile, you need to have that transformation from a, where they currently are stuck to be where they want

to go. And really think about the outcomes and the things that that unlocks from different emotional angles. Some people buy on money, right? They just want revenue. Some people buy on ease and convenience. Others might buy on reputation and influence. So how are you ticking different boxes for those different biotypes? That's one thing that just generally. Yeah, that's really cool. Once you've said what kind of what you do on the transformation you offer, it's then a case of who do you do it for, right? So at the moment here on your profile, there's no indication of who you actually speak to or who you want to help, right? So I would be really specific across your profile in signaling to the right people, because what you're also doing is disqualifying the wrong

types of people. So you're not wasting less time on calls, discovery calls of people who are never going to buy from you because they're not your target audience. So signal to those people, like in terms of geography, company size, like particular job title. So when I land on your profile and I'm looking for a service, I feel seen. That's your ultimate goal, right? So for me, I do personal branding. And so if I was to help someone on my profile, I might signal to them in the following way. I might say, are you stuck? And then I might say, you know, are you stuck, right? Spending an hour a day writing a LinkedIn post, I guess five likes and 200 impressions, right? Are you stuck getting frustrated because you've been on LinkedIn seven years, and you've never signed a

single client from it? Are you stuck? You know, your business isn't generating enough leads, you know LinkedIn has potential for inbound, but you're not able to capitalize on it. You see how I'm turning like a struggle into like a visual scenario that they can relate to and feel that's really important. Yeah, yeah. And then I'd say something like, imagine if and then give them the alternative. You had a steady flow of leads that were reliable and you had a calm nervous system because of it. Imagine if you were to able to generate three to five podcast invites every month that would land you directly in front of your ICP and hundreds of thousands of listeners, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So what I'm doing is I'm signaling to them because if they feel

what I'm saying, they immediately know, okay, this is for me. And then I might also be a mark specialist and say, you know, I work with founders, executives and creators who are looking to build, who have a B2B offer and want to build their personal brand on LinkedIn, right? So who it's for in terms of job title, B2B offer, I could even signal particular industries, or I could be very smart about it. And when I put testimonials in my about section, or like case studies, it's not just saying founder, I might say, you know, founder of a seven figure SaaS brand in the creator economy. Or somebody reading my profile who also works in the creator economy and is a founder and can see, oh, he's helped that person and they're similar to me. That's another signal

to them, right? And then the final thing, once you've said what you do in terms of transformation, who you do it for, the final thing is, why are you the best person to do that thing? Wow, comes in, right? So prove, prove being not just testimonials or case studies, but it could be before and after screenshots, a link to product portfolio, if you're a graphic designer, if you're PT, the before and after pics of your client stamped in your featured section, right?

How are we displaying and demonstrating that you can do the thing you say you do? That's really important. It could also be a logo bar across your benefit, you know, I'm trusted by and all the logos I worked with. It could also be linked to a media feature in your featured section, because you've featured in an article or maybe you've won an award or you've done a particular certification. Proof comes in very, very many forms. So it's about how am I lending credibility through association. So if on my profile, I have the logos of entrepreneur, Forbes, business insider, financial times, right? Immediately, you're going to trust me more because my brand is associated with those places where I featured in as an author or, you know, as a contributor, right? So many people I speak to, I do amazing work behind the scenes,

but not fully leveraging it and showing it on LinkedIn. Sometimes that comes down to like a lack of confidence. Other times it's just because they're just unaware that they're not coming across as credible as they actually are. So there'd be the three things that I'd say for your profile, what you do in terms of outcome transformation, who do you do it for, be more specific about signaling, and why are you the person that I should go to to do that thing? So I need some results and proof and to believe that you are the best at what you do. Wow, man, that is incredible.

I have like, sorry, but I feel bad. But yeah, I need to go back to the drawing board here and, you know, start from scratch in terms of fixing all of that. But at least now I have the direction because this whole time I was like, yeah, this doesn't feel right, but I also don't know how to make it better, right? So I really appreciate that you've shared with not only me, but all of our listeners, the three easy things to think about that are self-auditable, right? Like, and that's the part that I love the most that you know, when you have the answer, you don't need to, you know, go and ask somebody. However, if somebody did or were to want to reach you, what would be the best place? I will be linking your LinkedIn in the show notes. But outside of that, do you have some place where you prefer people reach out to you from this episode?

LinkedIn is the best place. That's where I'm most active. I do have a website, a new website coming in a week or so. So I don't know when this goes out, it might be live. But on my current website, I do actually have a profile checklist, which is free. It's a PDF that has, I think, like, 12, 15 steps that you can literally go through one by one and be like, have I done this tick? And it's free to download. So maybe that might help a few people out.

Yeah, I'll be sure to link that in the show notes as well. And I'll honestly give that a try myself in addition to the three things that you shared. But sure, this has been so incredible. I've learned so much. I feel like just the way I view LinkedIn has fundamentally changed now, especially around the final piece where it's so interesting that it is my profile, but it's not for me. It's for the world. And I feel like it's such an interesting mindset shift that feels trivial now. But I feel like even, you know, 15 minutes ago, that is not something that I was even considering/thinking about. So yeah, this has been so cool. I really appreciate you taking the time with today with us to share your just incredible expertise in this domain. I will continue to hopefully stay connected

and applaud you from the sidelines as you reach newer heights. And then yeah, hopefully we can have you back on the show based on comments or specific questions for you that we end up getting for this episode. So thank you so so much for it. Amazing. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Awesome.