The Formula For Attracting Your Ideal Clients On LinkedIn with Sam Browne

My guest today has over 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, but doesn't think of himself as a LinkedIn influencer or guru. And that's because he's not really. He is a creative at heart. He started in the world of music as an audio engineer. But he's also an entrepreneur. He's built several businesses. And so I wanted to talk to Sam Brown after seeing his content on LinkedIn because it was pretty different from anything that I had seen before. And I really wanted to share some of his strategies with you, my listeners, because I believe what Sam has to say and what Sam is going to share today could genuinely help you to attract more of your ideal clients on LinkedIn. So if you enjoy this episode and you get value from it, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and share it with a friend. You create because you love to create. If you're creating content purely from place of if I create content, I will get ex clients where I will make ex dollars. That's going to be very difficult to sustain long term. In the New Zealand Rockcharts, we had one song go to number one. I started a business. That business ended up being a modest six-figure business from day dot when you started LinkedIn. What have you been able to achieve with it? I was able to grow to 50,000 followers in the first year, 100,000 followers by the end of the second year. It just sort of changes how you are perceived in your industry and that creates massive leverage for you. You're not just a commodity alongside every other agency owner who does the same thing that you do. You're not competing on things like price. They only really want to work with you. The people who are really successful on LinkedIn are the people who are sharing stories drawn from their own lives. What something you can give some people listening where they might tangibly get inbound inquiries in the next 30 days. Okay, what I would do is. You said somewhere online that you felt you were building businesses for 20 years in the shadows. Basically, and then you decided to come out and start being a bit more public about what you do. What was it that made you decide that you needed to come out if the businesses were doing pretty well as they were? Yeah, I think of it as being behind the scenes entrepreneur for the best part of 20 years. And the reason I started creating on social media on LinkedIn was really the creative drive more than anything. So any creative person knows you create because you love to create first and foremost. I have a background of music where, you know, we were working on songs and trying to create albums in our teens and our 20s. And yes, we wanted some sort of commercial success, but that was very secondary to simply succeeding with having created something interesting. And that we were proud of. So LinkedIn was the fourth time that I actually tried to get something going. I tried to get a blog going maybe 10 years ago. I did a, I guess, a course. When the whole internet course thing was brand new, there was a business called Internet Business Mastery. They were called Jay and Silver, I want to say. And their most famous student is Pat Flynn. So Pat Flynn did their course. He became their kind of prize case study. And so I bought that course and with a view to starting a blog, I was going to call the creative code. And I think I ended up with 10 or 12 Google Docs in a dusty file somewhere. And that was that, you know, I'd never got going. And then I tried to get a podcast going. I think I bought Pat Flynn's podcast course, it was funnily enough. I recorded a handful of interviews of that, but they never saw the light of day. They never got uploaded. And then I think I had a third attempt anyway. LinkedIn was number four where, for some reason, I guess because the bar was quite low in terms of going from idea to execution, it was simply write something, hit publish, and now it's on LinkedIn. I did that and went live. And from that very first post, of course, nothing much happened early on. But enough must have happened on that very first post that I thought, okay, I'm going to do it again. I got a handful of likes, a handful of comments. And I was sharing my journey as an entrepreneur at the time that was the focus of my content. So there was no master plan of, I'm going to build a personal brand. I'm going to help people on LinkedIn. That all came later. So I might, you know, as most LinkedIn creators, shall we say, do I pivoted several times before going, this is what I'm going to do. Yeah, interesting. So originally that was started because you wanted to create the outlet rather than you were trying to build some kind of audience or trying to make what you were doing behind the scenes more visible. Yes, I would say so. Honestly, I wish I had a better answer for this. Like, yeah, I knew if I built a personal brand, I could unlock multiple things. I actually think it's a great answer because my next question then would be, how important do you think it is? Let's say on a scale of one to ten just so we can get some real clarity to create on a platform and with a medium that you feel genuinely excited about. I think it's really important. I think if you're creating content purely from place of if I create content, I will get ex clients or I will make ex dollars, that's going to be very difficult to sustain long term. And even if you do sustain it, the content's not going to be that interesting. It's sort of, you almost have to want to create content for its own sake in order for it to become a financial success. I'm sure we could find some exceptions to that rule, but, you know, I would do it for free, is the point, I guess, as I did with music. I am happy to explore ideas, put them on the page, arrange my thoughts into the best configuration of those ideas as possible to communicate them to other people, share them with people, get feedback that was valuable and helpful. That alone is enough that I would keep doing it. And I think in many ways, the more I focus on how do I get my next client, how do I level up my business through LinkedIn, you can lose some of the magic when you go too far to that. So it has to be a balance, it has to be, do I love this, am I proud of the content I'm putting out and is it getting me clients as well? Both those things need to be true. There's a mindset piece there, isn't there, because it's easy to focus on, is this getting me clients? Is this actually growing my business, especially when that's what you need? And I think what's interesting about your story and about your journey is you've continually put the creativity before the money, as far as I understand. So as far as I understand, when you're trying to get your band off the ground, one of the reasons that you started your first business was to fund the music, is that right? Yeah. So talk me through that thinking, talk me through that thinking versus we need to make this band commercially successful to keep doing the thing that we love. Yeah, I mean, we did want that to happen eventually, but before making the first, before recording the first song, even before I had a band actually, I had a realization that I needed a way to have money coming in, have income every week without having a 95th job. So I had a job at the time, quite a good job. I had a corporate job with Yahoo, who had started a New Zealand, and I was sort of part of their first iteration of stuff. They kind of did a big hire, and I was like a corporate salesman. And I was going to my cubicle each day, and a friend of mine actually had recorded and released his first album. And he and I had played in bars for a while together. And it was sort of like, made me realize if I don't get off this convey about of the corporate grind, 10, 20, 30 years is going to go by, and I'm going to wonder what happened, and he's already doing this thing that I could be doing. So it was great, so I'm really grateful to him to sort of show me there is an alternative way. So that realization that I need income without having a job was what spurred me to start my business, find a band, a live music agency. And I did want it to be a financial success, but ultimately it was a means to an end. It was something that would free me up to do this thing that I wanted to do creatively. I hoped that the band and the music and the songs would become commercially viable, fast enough that I could transition to just that, and just write songs to make albums. That was the dream. But for as long as it took for that to happen, I would have this music agency as the kind of engine that would keep things going in the meantime, because I realized it would likely take years if it ever happened, and ultimately it didn't. So I was able to fund recording two albums with the band. Which was successful though, right? Like didn't one of them have the charts in New Zealand? Yes, in New Zealand, in New Zealand rock charts, yes. We had one song go to number one in the New Zealand rock charts, and stay there for quite a while. I think two of our songs maybe, I'm not sure about the second one, I'm pretty sure that it's sort of briefly touched, number one for like a week or something. But one of them was quite enduring, and even for years afterwards, it would regularly get daily radio play. But yeah, just in New Zealand, just in the rock charts, we had a glimpse of, you know, start 'em, but there was a lot more money going in than coming back, basically, yeah. And I sometimes think of, you know, we did it for six years, in total we did one album in New Zealand, one album in Nashville, two or three years later. By their time, the second album came out, I was really spent physically and emotionally. My voice actually stopped working. I couldn't sing. I could talk, but I knew just, it was almost like my body was like, you need to stop. That really sapped the momentum out of the project. People were getting married and having children and so forth. And it was kind of, it sort of felt like this is the end of the chapter. But, you know, we gave it a good bash, six years. What would you say was your biggest lesson will take away from those six years? One thing that did happen is, as the sole songwriter, I was receiving income from all the radio play. And I was sharing it with the band in some instances. Like if we needed to buy equipment, we needed to spend $10,000 on equipment. At one point, we used songwriting royalties to pay for that. But there was always sort of a, that probably created resentment that I was getting all the income as the sole songwriter. But they were going out with me as the band to perform the songs. I think if I did it again, that would be something. I'd be really mindful of. I probably just thought, eventually, we'll all be making good money from every time we go on stage together. So it's fine. But because that never happened, you know, it created some resentment. And the business that you started to fund that project is still going today, right? It is. Yeah. So I started in 2008. And really knew nothing at all about business. This 2008 is the Dark Ages, right? I think WordPress was maybe a few years old, YouTube was a few years old. So it's not like now where you kind of Google, how do I create a great home page on my website? And you have unlimited resources to help you. It was like buying a textbook. I remember when I first started learning to code. It was like a textbook about HTML. - Yeah, and I certainly got most things wrong. You know, I somehow got this thing up with the help of a, I found a design agency who in hindsight were not at all suitable for the project, but I didn't know what I didn't know. I found a developer who was very kind to me in terms of what he charged me, and that was really crucial. So, you know, the music agency, if you think it's like Airbnb, but with bands instead of places to stay, it's a marketplace. At the time, this is before iPhones and cheap high quality video cameras. So all of these bands I was trying to book, they didn't have videos. It was just audio. The audio was usually pretty bad if they had it at all. It was a tall order trying to get them gigs. So a bit like Airbnb when they first started, people trying to take photos of their properties and realizing that the photos were terrible. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so those first few years are really lean as a result. It was enough that I survived, and I was in my tweenies, I had no responsibilities, I had low rent. So, you know, I was able to survive, but only just. I left a good corporate salary for essentially minimum wage kind of money, but I was always happier with my own business than when I had the corporate job. And over the years, it just grew and grew and grew. So really up until COVID, which happened like 12 years in, it was growing by anywhere from, in a good year, it would grow by 50%. On average, it was about 20% year on year over and over. Started with just me. My dad came on early on to take care of all of the bookkeeping. And then today, it's a team of three full-timers and the business kind of runs itself, so to speak. I do check in with my team every day. And if they have a curly question or something, I'll get called out and because I've sort of worked every role and seen 1,000 events, I will know the answer or at least I'll be able to come up with a pretty good answer. But, you know, I'm really fortunate that team I've got now have been with me for about three years, maybe a little longer. So they know their role's better than me at this point. And that business has really allowed me to pour a lot of time and energy into building the audience that I did on LinkedIn. It seems to be a core theme, like the way that you've approached business and creativity, is that you take care of the money first so that you can have more creative freedom in the corrosion process, would that be fair to say? - Yeah, I think that's fair to say. I think, you know, I certainly have an entrepreneur's approach in that I'm not averse to risk, but I like to take risks with a bit of a backstop, I guess. And as we were talking about earlier, it's like, what's the worst that can happen? I guess if you have a solid revenue machine ticking away in the background, the worst that can happen is, oh, well, I have to just go back to that. And then, well, if this thing that I'm working on completely falls over, will I be screwed or will it be okay? And how do I sort of ensure that, no matter what, things don't get too bad? - Hmm, I've got a question in my head that's why I grabbed my notebook 'cause I'm right down so I can come back to it. But, talk to me about where LinkedIn came into the picture for you in this journey. - Yeah, so by the time I started on LinkedIn, which was in January 22nd, when I really started posting. So I'd started find a band, the Music Agency, in 2008. That led to Auckland Weddings, which is a localized wedding marketplace for Auckland City in about 2012. And then that led to New Zealand Venues, 2018, which was a nationwide venue booking marketplace. So they're all kind of linked to each other. - But were they sub-businesses and sub-domains or were they like-- - They're completely independent of find a band. They had their own domains. - Did you just take that model and just apply it to different issues? - Kind of, there are different models in that with the Music Agency, my team handles every single inquiry and we're an agency, really, even though it's presented as a marketplace. So we are actually administering every single booking with Auckland Weddings and with New Zealand Venues. I've sold out of those businesses now, but when I was in them, they are pure advertising platforms. So you would pay, say, $2,000 a year for your profile to be on that site. And we would include you in blog content and email newsletters and stuff, but we would not be speaking to clients who wanted to book your service for their wedding. - Right, okay. So you have sold those businesses now, but in that timeline, you then had those businesses and so then where did LinkedIn come into the picture? When did you-- So those businesses were all more or less going swimmingly and then a little thing called COVID happened because all three of them were very strongly tied to the event industry, which sort of ceased to exist. I had a pretty shaky few months of going, what the hell am I going to do now? It was actually worse than that because especially with the finder band in particular, it felt like we spent months just sending refunds to people who had already paid sizeable deposits, six to 12 months earlier. We didn't have something in the contract specific to COVID as you would imagine. It was so-- it was a new-- we do now. It was very financially impactful. And so that didn't sort of directly lead me to start posting on LinkedIn, but probably if COVID had not happened, I don't think I would have been in a place where I had time on my hands, was thinking about the next 10 years. Probably what's conducive to putting me in a place of going, I want to have another go at this, creative outlet sharing my entrepreneurial experiences and lessons. Yeah, I would love to say, oh, this happened and I rethought my life and I decided this while I'm going to do. But I think it was relatively organic. I had this urge to write, to create, to share. I'd been doing it informally with friends one-on-one for a long time where they would-- especially kind of create businesses, they would say, I'm thinking about starting a-- one friend was starting a school for drummers, for example, or I'm starting a real estate photography company. And I would be able to fill in the blanks with them and go, this has been my experience. Yes, you do need a website early on and no, you don't need to pay a brand agency. That's not something that you have to do. There's sorts of things. Just answering questions that you would easily know if you were an experienced entrepreneur, but you wouldn't if you were brand new to it. And I love that experience. I love that-- that was a big part of it too. I love the feeling of people going, that really helped me. And really inspired me. I would often get a text or an email or something after we'd had a coffee together, where they'd be saying, I'm just buzzing. I'm so excited to put into practice everything we talked about today. And that is a very addictive feeling to be creating in people. And I wonder if maybe that was it that I thought I want to be in a situation where I'm creating that feeling in people on a wide scale. Interesting. I think about that as the impact piece. I think you can take care of a lot of the personal wants and desires, but then there comes a point where your needs are taken care of. And then you start thinking, what about the needs of others? In that sense of really feeling like the stuff that you're doing is making a difference to people's lives. And I've definitely experienced that, right? You can have all the financial success. You can have the best clients. You can have this. You can have that traveling the world. But if you don't really feel like any of it is really making a positive impact to someone's life, it can feel quite empty. So what happened in COVID? That sounds like a really stressful time. How did you get through that? Yeah, so I feel like I spent months kind of pulling my hair out and playing PlayStation. Yeah. Before anything much happened, eventually, I actually started a kind of stopgap business. And what that was was, all of my businesses at that time were very tied to New Zealand, as well as the events industry. So in hindsight, I had left myself on very shaky ground. That was definitely a realization that would have to change. I wouldn't do that again. So I started a business called Haro SEO. And what this is, when I said business, I started a website and the business was me. I set up a Squarespace site in a weekend. And so Haro SEO was leveraging a service which was called Help a Reporter Out. So help a reporter out. You would sign up. And you would say, if a reporter is needing a source for live entertainment, send me an email. And I, you know, with the question. And I will answer the question. And if my answer is good, you will feature my answer. And most importantly, a link to my website. And so the sorts of reporters that were using the service would be like Forbes or MSN. So big sites. There's small sites as well, but there's some really big ones. I had experienced this myself. I'd work with a freelancer who had ghost written for me to get these links on various sites. And it was a really good trade off that the ROI was really high. You'd get these really high quality backlinks to your site. So I set that up as a service. And then I asked in Brian Dean's Facebook group, Brian is like a rock star of SEO. And I was in his group because I'd bought his course years before I like messaged his admin and said, hey, I've just started this new thing, building backlinks. I don't want to step on anybody's toes. Is it okay if I talk about it in the group? And Brian himself replied and said, hey, that sounds really interesting. Do you want to do it for me? And so he ended up being my first client. So this would be like being a web designer and then Christo is your first client. Yeah. That was ridiculous. I was very intimidating, but we did it. And he was so happy that he ordered again. And we did it again. And he ended up doing three quite big orders with me and providing the first, probably $10,000 of the business earn came through Brian. And he was kind enough to give me a great testimonial. He said I could use his photo. And that then meant that everybody else who visited the site when all these guys must be good. So bless him. He really got me out of a tight spot where that business ended up being a modest, six-figure business, modest, but very welcome. It kind of paid the bills for a couple of years. And for various reasons, AI coming in and stuff, it didn't last forever. But yeah, that was how I kept the wolf from the door for a couple of years. What interests me, I'm sure it isn't quite as simple as you're making it sound, but what interests me is your ability to essentially just spin up an idea and start making money from it. Like if you look at your beginning of your journey through to now, I was like, oh, well, I had a job and I wanted to do more music. So I just started a business. I was like, in the music industry, to pay for the thing and essentially kind of make it sound quite easy. What process do you go through when you come up with an idea in order to a, figure out if it's commercially viable and b, once you figure out if it's commercially viable, how do you actually then grow it into something that isn't just you as a freelancer? Yeah, so I've had to ask myself this question, especially with building a personal brand, you start to have opportunities come across your radar more regularly. So some of the questions I would be asking, it would depend whether the person had previously run businesses or not, but for myself, the questions I would be asking, the first one would actually be, do I actually want to do this? Like all other things out of the way, do I actually want my day to be selling insurance or use cars or whatever the case may be? No matter how much money I'm going to make, is that something that I'm okay with doing day in and day out? That's the first one. And sometimes that can be deceptive, something that's. seems really glamorous and fun. Probably won't be when you do it for the 100th time. - Do you have a litmus test if you've never done that thing before? 'Cause I'm assuming did you have to do SEO for your finder band? And then so you knew kind of what doing SEO was like, is that how you would experience it? - Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so I had learnt SEO myself sort of DIY SEO, finder band, then Auckland weddings, then use on venues. So everything I was learning, I was applying to those sites and seeing what worked, I had a certain amount of confidence when I did the Haro SEO business, that it would probably be pretty good. I knew it would work. It was a question of logistic stuff, how fast can we do it? What happens if people aren't happy with the links, these sorts of things? So no, I think there's always a leap of faith to some extent, but I think with most things, certainly with an online business, where you're not paying for a lease and all of those sort of hard costs that a pre-internet business would require. I've never owned a shop, you know, I've never done a business where you have to outlay $100,000 just to get your first dollar. So that's like how bad could it be, I guess. And usually by the time when I launch the site, I've thought hard about, do I want to do it? You know, how commercially viable is this? This is a big one. Now, how big is the market? Ideally, really. I really only want to have a business with few exceptions where the market is global. If I can, you know, if I had the choice between the two, if I'm going to do a local business, I need to feel that there's some sort of massive advantage that I could build in. How do you let this test, whether it's commercially viable? So let's just say, I'm in your brain. You come up with an idea like you mentioned before, you're working on a new SaaS business. What are the steps that you go through to figure out? A, if you enjoy it, which sounds like, do I have any experience doing it in the past? Do I know what my day-to-day would be like? Yep. And then B, do I think this thing has got any kind of commercial viability? Well, again, there's a certain leap of faith to it, but I would sort of do a bit of a thought experiment. I would do a lot of, you know, writing in a notebook, honestly, and going, how many customers realistically are we going to get? Probably the question I ask myself most is would I pay for this? So often the kind of stuff I'm doing, I would potentially be a customer of it because that sort of helps with customer research. I don't think I've ever done anything where I know nothing about the market whatsoever. So I put myself in the shoes of the customer and think, and that will inform things like pricing, what does the service look like if I'm shaping the offer? What matters, what doesn't matter? So with the hire, we were building links, right? And you would pay most SEO companies, you would pay a monthly retainer, let's say, that's, you know, $3,000 or $3,000 a month, and the customer is required to trust that they will get enough value that that retainer is worth it. And I didn't like that. So I said instead you will pay a set amount, and for that amount we will build you 20 links. And it might take us six months to do it, but you won't be charging anymore. We're just gonna build, build, build until you have those 20 links. So you, the customer, no one day one, you have a very defined outcome. And I thought I would pay for that. It's not a cheap service, but it's such a clear outcome. And if I'm the type of person who's paying for these high end links, I know that the ROI from it is really high. And so that's what I sold. That's how I set it up. - That's awesome. So you put yourself in your customer shoes, basically as they would I pay for this? - All the time. I do that all the time. Yeah. - Okay. - Is there anything else in terms of going from idea to actually getting traction in the marketplace that you think you ask yourself, processes that you go through? - Something I should do more, but don't, I don't do anywhere near as much real customer analysis and research. And I'm probably getting better at it now. You know, doing beta groups and beta launches and stuff. I recognize the value of that, but traditionally I probably have just trusted my judgment that we will launch something. I don't really do MVPs. I like to launch with something pretty good. You know, I'll aim for something that's 70% what this thing will eventually be on day one, rather than 20%. And again, I see the logic for MVPs, but I guess after all these years of building things and seeing how the market reacts to things, I just try and make it the best I can possibly make it on day one, rather than have that idea of like, I'll just ship it quickly and then base on what happens, then I'll make the real thing. I get it why people would do that, but that's not my nature. I like to try and make it every detail the best I can make it. - What's the thinking behind that? Because that's quite contradictory advice to what a lot of startup founders would suggest. So what's the reason that you personally do that? - Yeah, I don't even know if I would advise other people to do it, it's just what I do do. Being honest. I mean, the reason is when I look at my career, creatively and business-wise, the thread that runs through everything is attention to detail, trying to make the best thing I can with the resources that I have. So I just never have launched an MVP and then gone, look, it's just the MVP, don't judge it, I'm gonna make it better later. I haven't really been in a situation where I have done that or that has made sense to me. I think I go into it now accepting that yes, the market and the way the market reacts will mean I make changes, but I just try and nail it on day one. - Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, I guess it changes people's experience of the product. I think there can be versions of an MVP that do more damage than good. - Right. - Like you can go into the market and be like, "There's just never been people like this, it's shit." And then when it gets better and people advertise it again, you're like, "Yeah, I've tried that." - Exactly. - I know what these guys are putting out to the market and the product isn't good. - That's right. - But it's a fine balance, isn't it, between the resources to actually create something that you can feel proud of and that you know is really good versus actually creating it and getting paying customers. - I'm working on something now that I've been working on for several years and that is a consequence of this attitude of let's make it the best it can possibly be. Really, I would have been smarter to get something up years ago. Maybe, arguably. It's like a personality trait that I can't get around as opposed to like you should do this. I definitely wouldn't tell everybody to do it. It's the opposite of what a lot of people do, but it has worked for me personally. - A personality trait or a pattern as we discussed earlier with Chris T. - Right, it's like there's probably something behind that a fear or something you're like, well I wanna do that in case people feel this or in case people judge this. - I think that's probably the case. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is understandable. - Yeah. So I wanna talk about LinkedIn because I think LinkedIn can be a really powerful platform. You've utilized it incredibly well and you now teach people how to utilize it. Before we do that, I think it was important to share your story so people understand who you are and what angle you're coming at. But I'd also like to learn a little bit more about, I guess from day dot when you started LinkedIn to now, what have you been able to achieve with it? What are some results that you've created for yourself and for other people that you feel give you some authority to talk about LinkedIn as a subject? - Mm-hmm. I started on LinkedIn January 2022. So we were just coming out of COVID at the time. In New Zealand, COVID kind of unofficially ended at the end of 2021. I guess lots of lockdowns in and out of lockdown for those two years. So I started posting, I would say, I was posting maybe four or five times a week and I had never used Canva at that time, let alone any design, anything beyond Canva. So I had literally no design skills. So all my posts were just text posts and I was just sharing the types of stories I've been sharing with you about, this is why I started Howro SEO. This is how I got Find a Band started. This is why Find a Band led to these other businesses and I was combining that with, you know, there were business lessons and then there were stories as well. And so because of the way I was sharing it and maybe because I had a unique point of view, I was able to grow to 50,000 followers in the first year, 100,000 followers by the end of the second year. As that was happening, so I was growing fairly rapidly. Other people were growing at that rate but a handful of us kind of all did it at the same time and most people didn't, you know, so those were good numbers. So people started reaching out to me and saying, hey, I really like how you write on LinkedIn. You know, do you offer it as a service? And eventually I said, yep, I will do a call with you. Started doing one hour calls. In terms of the way it has impacted my life. So at this point, it's a multi-six-fever business for me personally. I was just doing it solo up until very recently. I just hired my partner full time to help me with LinkedIn. It became a very substantial income source for me personally and then lead generation is a big focus for the clients that I work with. So nowadays I work with mostly US founders, one-on-one consultants and agency owners primarily and I help them grow their audience, get really clear on the type of content they're creating and most importantly for them usually generate leads. So have clients coming to them saying, I wanna work with you. I've worked with about 60 people that way, one-on-one. And then I started doing group coaching programs as well. I did my first one late last year. We've got another one starting in, think May of this year. We're deciding on the exact date. And so the type of impact that it has besides people attract in clients and making LinkedIn a really valuable revenue source for them it positions them as industry experts. So the result of that is they get invited on industry podcasts, they get asked to speak at events and they become known, they become kind of industry famous. And so they become thought leaders. They can leverage that in many different ways. Some of them are authors as well. It just sort of changes how you are perceived in your industry no matter what that industry is and that creates massive leverage for you. Where now you're no longer competing, you're not just a commodity alongside every other agency owner who does the same thing that you do. They only really wanna work with you because they love your content and that's kind of the goal. - So you're currently still running find a band and you're also doing LinkedIn consults, so you kind of technically got two businesses. - Yes, I'm really out of find a band in terms of a role. I just make sure that the team that I have have everything they need that they're supported and I'm there for them and I'll probably, I speak to them every day really, but I'm not sort of sitting down to an inbox full of stuff to deal with and they are. Yeah, after many years of being in the business I'm now out of it. - Yeah, and that's pretty cool in itself, right? You can talk to people about how you've done that. - Yep, what do you think when you look around, at LinkedIn you said you talk to agency owners, you coach agency owners. What do you think of some of the biggest mistakes that agency owners specifically in the creative space? So think design, think animation, branding, film. What mistakes are they making on LinkedIn that are preventing them from getting more clients reaching out and saying, "Hey, how do we work with you?" Yeah, okay. So the first thing I would think of is the people who are really successful on LinkedIn are the people who are sharing stories drawn from their own lives. So let's say you are you design websites. If you are just sharing, here's how to create a really good homepage or ten things you should know before you rebrand your website. That's okay. You know, and mate, if you do a really good job of it and aesthetically it's beautiful, that will work okay for you. It might work quite well. But if you are looking to build real momentum with a brand, you want to be thinking about what is it about me that I've done that makes me interesting and unique. How can I incorporate that into my content? So that could be things like one of my clients collects rare comics. He has Superman number one. I think Batman number one, 10-inch-minute Ninja Turtles. This is a pretty wealthy guy. You know, these are significant investments. So he could tell a story about that. What happened in his presumably in his childhood that made him really want these comics? How did it feel when he finally acquired them? What are some of their surprising things that go along with being the owner of a number one Superman comic? Because what they will do is make him really memorable. He will be the only person in his niche, probably on LinkedIn, who is talking about that exact thing. So straight away he's taking up mind share in his audience's mind in a way that everybody else doing the exact same services is not. That's a really crucial one. And then you know, I mentioned storytelling as well. So this is a content, no matter what the content is, the more you can make it a story, the better. And so what I mean by that is there needs to be a starting point where we meet the players, the people who are in the story. Typically they created themselves, maybe somebody else as well. There needs to be a challenge to be overcome. And then we share the journey of them, maybe not quite getting there and wondering if they'll ever make it. They finally overcome the challenge and then he has how life is on the other side. So that's the classic, there are other stories, but that's the classic storytelling sequence. Heroes journey. Yes, exactly. So the more we can get that kind of hero's journey type idea into the content, the more interesting the content is going to be. And the challenge might be something pretty small or it might be something huge. It might be a massive health challenge where you're in a car accident and you were in a coma and you didn't know if you were going to walk ever again. And you know, months of physio and you know, that would be a really one extreme. At the other extreme, it could be had this client and then we kind of had a falling out and they didn't pay their bill. They owed me $12,000 and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to see the money again, but then this and this happened and you know, we were able to figure it out. People are desperately seeking out this kind of content because it's relatively rare. We're not looking for, you know, the 10 design tools you should know about in 2026. It's going to do okay, but it's no near as engaging as someone sharing a story that only they can tell. When I'm doing this work with my clients and we say things like, what is it from your journey or your story that makes you unique? What are some stories that you can share? I get a lot of blank stares and I get a lot of, well, I don't know, my life's not that interesting. I just did X, Y and Z. One of the exercises that I get my clients to do is they call the river of life where they go back and they think from the moment they were born all the way through to now. What are the good things that have happened? What are the bad things that happen? The highs, the lows, the things they remember. And I'm yet to see someone's river of life that I think is boring. But to them, they think it's boring because the way I explain it is like you're the director of the film. You've seen the behind the scenes. You have seen that shot being taken over and over and over and over again. So when it goes on the cinema, on the screen, you're like, I know this whole story. I've seen it inside out. It's not interesting to me. But for somebody sitting at it for the first time, it's really interesting to them. So when you're working with your clients, how do you get them to identify what those unique things are about them and what kind of stories that they should be telling? The best way by far is for them to ask their spouse for help. If they are married, if they're not, of course, like a close friend or family member. I have a series of questions that I run through with them. It will be things like, what's the feeling that people have when I enter the room? What's something I've done that is unusual or surprising? What would people find surprising about me in my journey up to this point? And yeah, I love your exercise, the river of life. I did something similar like that as well. And that is great. It's like when we think back, I'm in my 40s. So I think if I think about my teenage years, I've got to really think hard to go, what are the things that happen? You know, what were the big moments along the way? When you spend a bit of time doing that, it can be interesting what comes out of it. I completely forgot this and then my girlfriend reminded me of it recently. Part of the way I funded starting Finder Band is I went on a game show and I won $10,000 on that game show. So I'd already saved some money doing other various bits and pieces. And then the game show gave me the final $10,000 and I more or less quit my job. Maybe not the next day, but within the next few weeks. That's a pretty unique thing. Not everybody goes on a game show. It's easy to just completely forget these things because as you say it's your life. I call them wild cards. The more you can find these wild cards to play, the more memorable you're going to become. I increasingly try and share my experiences with my band, writing the songs, going on to a recording in Nashville and going out to watch the world's best musicians and bars playing for tips. The more we can find these stories, the better. That is what is going to massively differentiate you. And as you say, everybody has them. Some people have done much wilder stuff than I have. Some people struggle with it and go, "I'm really not sure, but everybody's got a story." I think what I love my client's struggle with is they feel like it's irrelevant to their business. So how do we tie these things together? How does me sharing about this spiritual retreat I went on in Bali and finding myself, relating to getting more design clients? Let's use that example. That is a perfect example of you showing your values. If you are a business coach for creative people, well, there are lots of people who do that. But if you are a business coach for creative people who goes to silent meditation retreats in Bali, there is a subset of people who are interested in business coaching in general who go, "I really relate to that." They might not have done it. They might not ever want to do it. But you are indicating to them, "This is the kind of person I am." You're my kind of person. Yeah. So it's almost like finding your friendship group at scale. Yeah. Because from a psychological perspective, the thing that I find interesting is, oftentimes, the closer we are to someone, if we disregard family for a moment and we just think about our friends, it's really about the types of experience we've had with them and the frequency of those experiences. So I think what we typically find is that our best friends are usually people that we've had the most experiences with. And those experiences have been outside of the norm. So I think some of my best friends, often I went to uni with a lot of them. So like, universities are very unique experience. I went travelling with a lot of them. We've been to different places in the world. Those things really solidify relationships. So what it sounds like you're saying is that we're trying to almost recreate that at scale. Yeah. I like that. Sure. When we're sharing stories like that, like the silent meditation retreat in Bali, we are making it easy for the reader to say, "Oh, they're that kind of person." I don't realize that until they said that. Because I can tell you, if you're that kind of person, there'll be all kinds of other stuff like that. Maybe it's reflected in you. Maybe you're somebody who's really into exercise. Maybe you have hiked up several of the world's biggest mountains. There'll be all these things that will kind of make it easy for the reader to go, "Oh, yeah, I get it. I get the box that I can put them in." And that's not to say you're going to be exactly like everybody else who does that. But without that kind of marker, without that indication of personality and values, people just aren't sure. They just don't know you. A trap that people fall into with content is it's easy to forget that the people reading your content don't know you. I encourage my clients with every post to think, "Imagine these people have never heard of you. They've never read anything else you wrote. They are not aware of you in any way. How would that change the post? What would you do?" So that by the end of it, at the very least, they want to know more about you and ideally they really like you based on that post. And I fall into this too. You kind of assume everybody's watched every episode. It really does. And maybe they do to some extent, but almost certainly not to the extent that you're thinking of, because as you were saying, you are living with your own stories rolling around in your head all day every day. So you lose all perspective on what is interesting and unique. So from a very practical, tactical perspective, if someone's listening to this, they're running a design studio. And they've tried a bit of LinkedIn. They post some stuff, but really don't get much traction. What are some of the first things that you'd be looking at and maybe suggesting that they do? And if they want to essentially get more inbound inquiries from the federal client? Yeah. So the way I approach content on LinkedIn, I put it into three categories. Authority content where you are essentially educating your audience, personal content, we are sharing these personal stories and building trust with them and showing who you are and then sales content where you're getting leads. So the authority content is going to be things like here is a step by step guide on how to use Figma and Claude, for example, would be one right now. This is very practical. You know, it's not story based. This is just like showing here's something that I know because I am an expert in this particular industry in this particular niche. So you do step by step guides. You can do a quick win something that people can do in the next 15 minutes. That's going to sort of make life one percent better for them. What would be another one myth versus fact? This would be where you say everybody says this everybody says that you know canvara is terrible and you should only use Figma, but actually I think canvara is great for these particular use cases. That's where you are saying I am so comfortable in my own skin as a designer say that I'm willing to go against the status quo and say it's fine. It's fine that everybody does that, but I actually have found this to be true. That's authority content and that alone won't work for you that well, but it is how you build authority. It's how you become there go to expert for a particular topic. Then you combine that with personal content. So personal content will be things like my journey to success. So you essentially share that story of your career and how you ended up, you know, starting your agency say what I believe even when everybody else doesn't. So it's literally like myth versus fact, but on a personal scale it might be something like you know everybody says you need work life balance, but I actually. you think you should spend your 20s, working your arse off, and building the foundation of financial freedom for your whole career. - I don't think that. - But that might be what you think. - Yeah, yeah. So it's more like personal opinion. - Yeah, personal opinion. I'm putting myself out that you're taking a stance. You're saying, this is my unique perspective. And in doing so, you're showing the type of person you are as well, attracting some people, repelling other people. A person who impacted me. So you could share the story of a mentor or a colleague or even employee. Somebody who impacted your life and how they changed your life for the better and ideally in the form of a story. So when you combine the authority and the personal, that's gonna build authority and build trust. And essentially when you sell on LinkedIn, you are leveraging that authority and leveraging that trust. - I'm also an example of some sales content. - Yes, that's what everybody wants to know. And the reason I don't jump straight into it is because it really relies on the first two being done. But the classic one would be a case study where we show the before and after. So designers or any sort of visual entrepreneur has a massive advantage where they can say, well, here's what it looked like before and here's what it looked like after I did my thing. And that's actually great content. People love seeing before and after. So if you have a before and after, you could potentially name the person. If it doesn't make sense to use their full name, you can use their initials or you can get them a pseudonym. So you might say, when DB came to me, he built his website in Wix and it was going okay, but it didn't look great. He knew that it was, he was leaving money on the table. We did this, this and this for him. And today DB's site is making, you know, half a million dollars a year and growing rapidly. And here's what he had to say. And then you share his testimonial and his own words. Testimonial, you ideally want to focus on the outcome rather than, oh, working with Sam was great. What a nice guy. We had a lot of laughs along the way. Yeah, yeah. That's all fine. But what people care about is, and now the website makes 120% more money per month than it did before the redesign. That's a really simple one, but really powerful. And then do you have like a PS, if you're looking for help with this right now, semi-adm. Yes, but even just the act of sharing the case study along will kind of do that. But yeah, it doesn't hurt to say, okay. By the way, I work with people, I work with agent Sionas, I help them to do X on LinkedIn. And that's what I was trying to drive at before with pretend that people have never come across you before. People are sometimes worried about selling or seeming repetitive. But the greater danger by far is people not actually knowing what it is that you do, one you offer. Okay. What are your thoughts on putting PS's on most posts? So even like story posts, whatever, PS, my name's Sam. This is what I do. So I help, et cetera, follow me for more. I personally think just do it, just do it and do it and do it. I can see the argument for not doing it if you sort of have this, you know, quite deep share, maybe about this, you know, something a vulnerable post of that was the sort of thing you were doing. I could see how it would feel in Congress to go, by the way, if you need help with LinkedIn, I kind of do it like a, it's just a box that I took, if you like. So because it's exactly the same every time, hopefully, it doesn't seem out of line with the content, it doesn't sort of keep in it if you like. So 99 out of 100 times, I will just, for myself, and I tell clients to do it, just put it there. I'm interested cadence and I guess the percentage of personal story versus sales, content versus authority content. So I usually do something like 65% authority, 25% personal and 10% sales. Okay. So a little over half your content would be educating the audience about one and four posts. You do a personal post, you share a story and then one in 10 posts, you will actually directly sell. Now the thing about that is those other nine posts are selling your service. I've had plenty of people reach out after I've done a personal post and say, I really liked that and that was actually what got me to finally book a call because I've been following you for a while, I really like your stuff, but that really made me see, I really want to work with you. So it's not as if the rest of the time you're just spinning your wheels, but I like to do 110 where I really say, I usually would do once a month for myself that works out about right. I'll say, you know, I've got three, I've got space for three clients next month. If you are X, Y and Z and you need help with LinkedIn, you know, get in touch, here's the thing you need to do. And because I only need a small handful of clients with the business being small and I'd rather go deep with a small number of people, that has worked really well for me. Have you got any thoughts on when you share an authority piece, whether it should be shared through personal experience, slash the experience of a client versus here's 10 tips, how to insert the thing. So rather than like, here's 10 tips, how to make your website convert higher. When working with Jeff, I found that these 10 things made him go from, you know, X to Y. - I would combine the two. I would probably start with like, we just made some of these changes for Jeff and you know, he's making 60% more conversions per month. Here's a recommendation we gave him. - I mean, I love those posts. For me personally, when I read that, it does a few things. Number one, it shows me, you know what you're talking about. - Yep. - But number two, you're giving away the ideas. And I think a lot of people really stray away from that. I'm like, wow, he's sharing exactly how he did it. I hadn't thought about some of those things. Wow, that's really valuable. That just built my trust more. That doesn't make me think, oh, I'll just steal these things and then not work with this person. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a big one. So something like how to make your website convert more traffic. Well, there's a lot of information about that on the internet already. So whether I share my particular tricks or not, you can go out there if you're so inclined and you want to do it yourself. You can find, you know, a hundred ways to do that. So what you're doing when you are sharing your personal insights is you're not giving away the family jewels. You're basically showing people, if you were to pay me, I can do a really good job of this for you. And the people who will pay you aren't the type of people who are gonna kind of steal your ideas. That's one group of people where they're on LinkedIn or wherever. Soaking up the ideas are probably either poor or young or both. And they're never gonna be your client, you know? So you're not really losing anything. You're getting the person who has some money, they have more money than time. They want it not only executed, but executed really well. And you are basically showing them over and over again when you share this authority content, I can do that for you. Tips and tricks for someone, let's say your challenge is to get them some imbaron inquiries in the next 30 days. Yep, they're good at what they do. So they've got strong portfolio. They're already fairly established in terms of their online presence. So they're not like new out the gate. They've had a LinkedIn profile for a while. They've been posting for a while, but they're just seeing consistently that every post is getting for a handful of likes, maybe a couple of comments. Predominantly from peers, rather than prospects. What's a checklist that we can go through, or what's something that you can give some people listening where they might tangibly get some imbaron inquiries in the next 30 days. Okay, what I would do is if I wanted to sort of instantly start getting clients on LinkedIn, I would, content is an important part of it, but I would be doing active outbound. And specifically what I would do is I would say, okay, I wanna work with the types of people who follow Matt, I want them to follow me and hopefully buy from me. So you can go into LinkedIn and say, show me people who follow Matt, but don't follow me yet. And how deep can you go? When you pay for sales navigator, which is like paid LinkedIn, you can go really deep with this. But even with free LinkedIn, you can get quite deep. So I'd be able to see your followers who are not connected to me. And I think I could probably say who are in America. And then I would have them in front of me. And I could literally be sending up to 25 connection requests a day without LinkedIn, having a problem with it. So you can't send unlimited connection requests, you'll eventually hit a point where LinkedIn will say, you can't send any more today. But if you send 25 every day, that's fine. And to those 25 people, there's different ways you could do it. But what I would probably do is not include a note. That statistically actually performs surprisingly well in terms of people accepting the connection request. - So when you say a connection request, no, you mean when you send that connection request, you're not personalizing the message. - Correct, correct. So you can, but it's gonna be very time consuming to do it well. - What you would not wanna do is send a generic message to them. It's gonna do more harm than good. Let's just say we're doing a sort of a, we just wanna have something that we do each and every day. So I'd be sending those 25 connection requests a day to people who look like my ICP. So I'd be going, are they the, you know, you need to have that clarity. Who exactly buys from me? What sort of business do they run? What's it age are they? If there seems to be a particular group. So I wouldn't be sending connection requests to every single person who follows you. But that would probably be very helpful in terms of filtering down the list. And then so I send these connection requests out of that 25, five to 10 of them are gonna accept on average per day. And then to the ones who connect, I would be sending a message. I would be just starting a conversation initially. I wouldn't immediately leap to any sort of offer or anything. So for example, if I send a connection request to you, you accept it, I would go, hey Matt, nice to connect. You probably would say nothing. Most people would say nothing. And then the next day, I would send you something. I think of it exactly like when you're in a supermarket and they give you a little sausage on a stick to see if you like it. That's what I do now. I'd give you some value. I would make it very low-ask. I'd say not sure if this is something that would be helpful to you, but I've just created a LinkedIn growth guide for agency owners. It's just a notion guide. And there's no email gateway or anything. I'll just drop the link, see what you think. Very, very low-ask. I'm not asking you to put your email in to get a lead magnet, even though it is a lead magnet. So I'd send that to you and then I would follow that up. And I would say, you know, a day or two later, just checking in was that helpful for you. And of course, a lot of the time, a lot of people are just going to ignore you. This is essentially like cold outbound that you're doing in a sense. But you know, you only need a small number of those people to go, yeah, I did take a look. It was actually really useful, you know, and this is actually something that I'm looking for help with right now. So that's how I would do it. That's how I would sort of get instant runs on the board. Okay. And from a tactical perspective, how are you finding 25 people a day? If you just sort of say, show me people who follow Matt, who I'm not already connected to, you're going to get, you know, thousands of people. Okay. And then you can literally sit there sending connection a question. You're roughly, because I imagine from a time perspective, you're probably not going on to each profile, looking at what they do. You're kind of judging by their headlines and bio. Yeah, they seem interesting or go for them. Yes. And you just count in 25. From a tactical perspective for people listening, how do you actually get that list? Because I'm not even sure. And I've been using LinkedIn for a while. How do you get a list of people that follow you or are connected to you? but aren't connected to me. - So if I search for the word founder, and then one of the search filters will be people who follow Matt. So now I'm only gonna see founders who follow you on LinkedIn. And yeah, if you use sales navigator, you can go much deeper. You can say I want to see founders, co-founders, and business owners, so people who identify under these titles, only in X country, they've used LinkedIn in the last 30 days 'cause that means they're active. They are in this industry, their business sizes X, like how many? What's the head count? Then you can get really into it. - And so that's a better way, especially with someone who's only got free LinkedIn. That's a better way of finding your ICP because you know that if they're interested in that person's content, then they're probably gonna be interested in the sort of thing you do. - Yes, that's the goal. So you're kind of trying to find a creator who is very similar to you. - Yeah, so out, I mean, this is a lot of what we teach is about how to find the right partnerships and things like that. So using outreach to find partners rather than prospects. But we would be good examples, right? - Right. - So you've probably got agents, you own as in your thing. So why would go on to LinkedIn and probably not search founder? I'd probably search like creative studio or something. And then on filters, I would say is connected to SAM. - Yep. - Follow SAM. - Follow SAM. - Yep. - And then I would probably also filter second degree connections, right? - Yes. - 'Cause otherwise I'm gonna get people that follow both of us. - Yeah, as long as you don't have the first degree connections, which means they already do follow you. - Yeah, they won't show up. - Right, okay. Third degree is they're not connected to anyone you'd need. - Right, so I guess if I wasn't connected to you, I think just two is enough that you get ample source. - Okay, and can you just send as much as 25 on free? - Yes. - But you just can't do personalized, right? - You can't do in-mail with-- - Okay. - I think there's a limit now as well on free where you can't personalize. You can only personalize the connection request to like five people a week or something. - Oh, okay. - But like I think not personalizing it is good advice 'cause I think that like there's a stat around it somewhere. - Yeah, it's counter-intuitive. - It's basically-- - Well, what I do is, you know, I get 20 connection requests a day from all sorts of people. - Yeah. - I either go down the bit on your network and you just look at their title and it's like, "A.I. Lead General," I'm like, "No." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But then if I think maybe an ideal prospect, like design director at, except straightaway, and then if I'm not sure I go on to their profiles, and then see like, are they gonna try and tell me something basically? - Right. - So I guess on that, what are your thoughts on how you optimize your profile for this process and you go in like, "Shit, if I'm too, I help these people with this thing." "Dada-da-da, that person's gonna think I'm gonna pitch them immediately." So are you trying to dial back on that? Or do you think from a profile perspective, it's really important to be super clear on who you help, what you help them with, how you do it? - Yeah, so you identified the most important thing, which is the headline. So because the very first experience they're gonna have of you is just your profile pick, your name, and your headline. The headline is really, "Ital clients, "the most important piece of copy that you will write." And specifically, the first five or six words of the headline, "People are gonna judge, "yea or nay, a lot of the time, "on those first five or six words." So you wanna make sure that they don't come across as either very confusing. Like if I have no idea what you do, I'll probably ignore your connection request or unattractive, as you say, if it says, "A.I. Lee Jen, whatever, I'm gonna get it." Doesn't peak my interest. So I tell people you wanna create curiosity with the first five to six words. - Can you give me an example of that? - Yeah, sure. - So it's a form of design studio founder. - Yep. - What am I, I put, let's say it's supposed to be specific to give you some fuel. - Yep. - I'm a design studio founder, but I predominantly focus on designing and rebrands for SaaS founders. - I would literally put that. - Right. - Design and rebrand for SaaS founders. Because you said our people might be worried that they're gonna get sold to. Well, they probably are, right? But it doesn't have to be pushy and horrible. If you are a SaaS founder and you are very vaguely, maybe you're very much on the market or maybe you're thinking you will be on the market in six months, you're probably not gonna be that resistant to somebody who specializes in that exact thing. It wouldn't be very wise. So if you're anything like me, you've always got your eye out for new talent to work with. In many ways, the more you can call out, this is my exact specialty. These are the types of people I work with, the better. - I'm talking about profile optimization for a minute. Like what? - Yeah, some things I should be thinking about in terms of my actual LinkedIn profile. - Yeah, so if I had to like really sum it up, I would say every element of the LinkedIn profile should be making it clear who do you work with and what is the outcome that you get for those people. - And the outcome just for people listening is not a rebrand. The outcome is the result of the rebrand. - Yes, ideally. - Yeah, rebrand's a bit of a tricky one because it's sort of an intangible, right? Like I love when I work with like a marketing company where the outcome is you will make 35% to 40% more revenue per month without help because we're email marketers or something. Because then it's like really concrete. That's really great. It's really great for me as a consultant to work with that because we just sort of make sure that message is coming through really clearly in your banner and your headline and your about section. The hardest one for me is when I'm working with like a life coach and it's like you will have more confidence, clarity and joy. Like oh man, you know, it's gonna be hard to get them to pay 10 grand for this possibility of a better life. - Yeah. - So yeah, that's a sliding scale and something like a rebrand and some ways falls more or less in the middle. - Yeah, probably slight. Unless you're looking for a rebrand right now, it's probably slightly closer to the life coach than anything else, right? - Yeah, like I would imagine if you were a successful branding agency where you were taking people from a mediocre brand to a great one, you probably have a pretty consistent ROI showing up and that's why you've been so successful. So hopefully your testimonials will reflect that where you've got all these people saying, oh, it was night and day, the business increased so much after we did the rebrand. How important are recommendations on LinkedIn, do you think, do you give them any weight? - Yeah, I was just having this conversation with somebody the other day. I personally seldom make it that far down somebody's profile because they're right down the bottom. But it can be really valuable, I think, then nice to have. I personally put them quite low on the hierarchy of what I would worry about on your profile. So if I talk about the opposite end of it, the stuff that really matters or that I would prioritize, it's gonna be your banner, your headline, a decent profile pick, doesn't have to be professional, but it should be like a nice smiling photo of you, maybe with a brand color as your background and your featured section. Those would be the big ones, then your about section is worth doing as well. But if you just do banner, profile pick, headline featured, you're kind of 80% of the way there. - Okay, let's do a couple of quickfire, tactical LinkedIn questions. - Sure. - Is it worth having sales, navigator, slash business, LinkedIn premium? Is it worth paying for LinkedIn? - Yes, you don't have to use it every single month. It's not hugely expensive, but it's not cheap. It depends on the country that you're in exactly how much it costs, but it's probably more or less, you know, 50 bucks Americans, something like that per month. You can do a free trial if you've never used sales and never get it before, and that can be quite good to see how to use it, but you can also turn it on and off. So I personally turn it on and off because you can get that search information, you can export it and then have that list external to LinkedIn. So I think it's worth having it kind of on all the time, if you have a large enough agency that you need a lot of clients coming in. For me, I need a handful of clients per month. So it makes sense to sort of turn it on periodically, get my list and then make my way through that list. - Are you mainly paying for sales navigator or are there any other features that you think are worth paying for on LinkedIn? - So there's degrees of payment. There's LinkedIn free, there's LinkedIn premium, which I have had for a long time, mainly because you can get banned on LinkedIn temporarily when you are using LinkedIn free for strange things. So for example, if you've viewed too many profiles in a day, when you're on LinkedIn free, you can just get banned and you don't have LinkedIn for a week. You know which for me is somewhat disastrous. So I paid for LinkedIn premium, that gives you LinkedIn learning as well, which is actually really good. They bought Linda.com. So they have this massive, amazing library of teaching content. That's sort of level one, LinkedIn premium. Level two is sales navigator, which is excellent for what it is. And then you get into stuff that I don't know anything about, which is LinkedIn recruiter. And these are like thousands of dollars a month, as far as I know. But for a creative agency owner, premium is probably fine for the most part, and then using sales navigator periodically. - Okay, if I only had 20 minutes a day to invest into LinkedIn, what should I be doing if my main outcome that I'm really looking for is to get more clients? - I would definitely optimize my profile, 'cause that's one undone job. Once that was done, and don't, by the way, if you optimize your profile, and then you think it could be better in some way later, totally fine. I change mine every week, you know. So you're not like locked in in any way. And nobody cares, so I used to worry about-- - No one notices. - People will notice I'm trying to hit like that, I don't care. So I would definitely do that, and then assuming that was done, if the focus was purely on leads, outbound is gonna be the way to go. Sending messages outbound, and then sharing something pretty specific for those people that you're reaching out to that they're gonna find valuable. You know, the goal is, I tell people, it's like going to a party, and you're talking to somebody you've never met before. What would that conversation look like at first? That's how to start talking to them. So the thing you don't wanna do is sort of jump down their throat with. I help Sass founders with rebrands. We've just done three, you know, this-- - Which is 90% of the DMs, I get only 10, but why frankly? - Exactly, so people's guard goes up when you do that. So you wanna be a human first. But yeah, that's what I would do, for sure. Automation and AI tools, yeah or no? - Yeah, okay. We're pro AI and automation. - Particularly automation, yeah. So I'm increasingly using automation tools for my outreach, you know, I have whole flows that I use now. And so what we've been talking about, I use automation to do it, but I made sure that I was really clear on what actually worked before automating it and sort of scaling it up. So there are various tools you can use for that. I use HeyReach, that's my preferred outbound. - Hey Reach. - HeyReach, yep. There are many that are sort of moralist doing the same things. - So they're basically from what I understand and what I've seen in the past. You search on sales nav with a bunch of very specific criteria that kind of brings up your ICP. You then automate the connections with those people. So you're not setting them manually every day, sending out 25 connection requests. Do you automate the initial message or is that then manual? - Yeah, you know, you're right. I automate the initial message and then it becomes all here. human from there. So the initial messages simply, hey, name, nice to connect. - Right. - After you've connected. - Right. - And if you haven't connected, I have a series of things I do where I essentially, you know, look at your profile every couple of days, like a post every couple of days, kind of make it easy for you to go, oh man, the same guy keeps checking out my stuff. I think I'll maybe. - I'll block him. - Yeah, I'll block him. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay. And then when you send that next message, you kind of take the time to go in, look at their profile and be like, hey man, I see you do this, really like that. Because I've got a bit of a framework that I kind of, I say like, you need to check these five things when you send a cold DM. Sounds like you do something similar, but you're attaching that value. But it sounds like you could also, if you were really stretched your time and you knew that that resource was valuable and people had given you positive feedback, you could probably also automate the second message, let's say two or three days later, which is not sure if this is valuable for you. We've shared this with 100 founders and it helps get a specific result. No email required. Would you want to see the link or even just drop in the link? Yeah, I don't know if that's useful, no reply needed, no worries if not, and just kind of like, you could probably get quite far with that sort of outreach, right? - Yes, yeah, exactly. I would do exactly that, you know, the next day or a day after. If I send your message, you know, hey man, nice to connect and you do reply to it, the sequence is going to end. - Stop, yeah. - So now we're actually talking. - Okay. - If I was automating that message, I would keep it as short as possible. I wouldn't be saying things like, I would just be thinking what would an actual person do? - Yeah, what would they say? - As opposed to a nicely formatted like, you don't want to be too perfect, you want to feel off the cuff. - Yeah, yeah. - And not too long. - Not too long, short as possible, short as it can possibly be. - I always tell people to like, treat it like a WhatsApp converter, right? - Yeah. - Let your texting someone. - Yep, very much. - Voice notes, have you tried sending them? Do they perform any better than text DMs? - People are really polarised about them, some people hate them. I don't really use them, do you remember? - They're quite time-consuming, right? So you'd have to be quite specific. - See, I quite like getting them from people, hearing their voices and their accents and stuff, but I think text is a sure bit, right? We can read text and also it can be consumed anywhere. Whereas the voice note, you have to be in the right environment to actually consume it. - Yeah. - So yeah. I usually do them with people I already know. - Okay. - And where we're kind of having a chat and it's probably been a long chat and then maybe I got a fall walk. - Yeah, yeah. - You just like, "Hey man." - Yeah. - Yeah, a bit more human, bit more personal. - Yeah, I think there'd be an argument for them. I bet there'll be somebody who really, it's really part of their strategy, but it hasn't been for me. - Yeah. Okay, I had a couple of quick other ones. So how do you make sure that the results that you get from sales now are your ICP? Because I'm talking years ago now, but when I've used the automation on LinkedIn in the past, it's sending stuff to people I'm like, "That's not, you know, in that list, the first five on my ICP, but then page two or three." - Yep. - It's totally messed it's up. Has it got better, or is there other specific things that you do to ensure that you're only sending connection requests to your ICP? - Yeah. But this one would be the Boolean search tools. It's like a keyword field as part of your search. - Yes. - And mine will say something like agency and then capital letters, not lead gen, not personal brand. You know, all the things that I really don't want to be sending to, that's really useful for cutting down. I think there's always going to be a few that filter through, honestly. - In an ideal world, if you were doing this and you had a bit of a budget, would you have an ICP document that's very clear about who they are and, you know, getting specific around, they need to have been in a business for this amount of time, they need to have posted on LinkedIn for the last 30 days, et cetera, et cetera, and then just get a VA to find that list of people. Would that be more accurate than using sales and have search? Or at least maybe even have a sales and have search, spit a bunch of stuff out and then get a VA to go to every profile and make sure that it actually is. - Yeah, you probably could do that. I've not. I've not done that. I found it that's so close enough. It's like probably 80% plus. - And you're typically using that Boolean search rather than just the filters. - No, I use the filters as well. So on top of the filters you're describing, you know, I'll use pretty much all of them, you know, you can talk about how big is the company, what one to turn employees 10 to 50. - Yeah. - What sort of revenue, what country are they in, obviously, is an important one. How long they've been in the job can be a bit of a funny one, because you can imagine they could be perfect, but they've only just been in the job one year. There's probably, I want to say, 12 things to choose from within sales navigator and I combine that with the Boolean search. That gets me pretty damn close. - Okay, and so just again to clarify the Boolean search, if I was searching for say like my ICP is award-winning founder of a design studio that has less than 12 people that's been running their business for at least five years, and their revenue is 250K plus. - Yep. - What kind of thing would I be putting in to those search terms? - You would be able to say, I want it to be people who identify as founder or co-founder, or if there's any other word that they use to read. - Direct, direct. - Direct, correct. - Yeah, those three. So you could literally say, I only want it to be shown to people who call themselves one of these three. - Yep. - And if you thought of any others, you could put them in. And then if you say, in terms of industry, I only want people who are in design. That will obviously massively cut it down. Yeah, all of the things you described you could put in, you probably wouldn't actually even need the Boolean search, I would think. You know, obviously you could run the search and go, is that exactly right? Or is it in terms of who's slipping through the net, so to speak? That's what I would do. I would do the search and then go, okay, these people are slipping through because I forgot that, and I know, some different kind of design would actually fall into that and I don't want to talk to them. Yeah, it's weird. I can't remember what the things coming up were, but it was like, stuff for us like, how is it picked up that? That's just like not like someone in recruitment or something. I'm like, I have no idea why the search has picked that up. Like some of the stuff was like, they used to work in an agency or something and it's still picking that up. And it's like, I think part of it is a lot of people don't update their profile, right? So instead of like 2013 to 2019, they've put 2013 to present. - Oh yeah. - And then their current thing is like, it's like, well, you working on both or is it this? So it's actually almost impossible to filter those people out, because they're just not using LinkedIn properly. So maybe it has posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days as a good filter because then you know, people are actually active. But then again, then you're missing out on a bunch of people who I know, for example, my ideal clients don't post that much on LinkedIn. Like as part of why we're talking about this, trying to get people to create more content. So then that filter is out of a bunch of people who are using it, but not posting any content. - True. - It's probably more important for me than for you. There's probably training people in your ICP who haven't posted in the last 90 days. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe like my, and I guess if people are listening to this, doing some of those test searches and maybe what going through the first two or three pages of results and seeing like, has this nailed it? If not, let's try something else. - Exactly. - When you finally get it. - Yeah. Then you can search and search. You know, there's no limit to how many searches as far as I know. - Yeah. You'll be able to tell as you say, within two or three pages, is this exactly right? And if it isn't, why isn't it? What's that about it? - Yeah. - Yeah. The bullying is kind of like the nice secondary step to filter. - Okay, perfect. - Sam, is there anything that we haven't spoken about today in terms of attracting clients through LinkedIn, growing a creative business that you feel we should have spoken about, or that you want people to know or hear? - I guess the only other thing I would mention is if you haven't already, I would strongly recommend starting an email list, starting a newsletter, using ConvertKit or BeHeyev or Substack, especially early on, it almost doesn't matter, which one I use ConvertKit, but up to 10,000 subscribers are free on ConvertKit and BeHeyev. - Oh, wow. - You know, that's a lot of subscribers that they're taking. - You send emails every week and that's still free. - Yeah. And that combining LinkedIn with email marketing is a real cheat code, you know, for a lot of my clients start on LinkedIn, of course, and join my email list. Then through all the emails they receive, they finally decide to work with me. That would be one to do. - It's a huge trick that agencies miss because you know, even sharing your work or whatever, but those thought leadership pieces, landing in people's inbox rather than one in 10 people seeing that post on LinkedIn. - Exactly. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, it's really valuable. You know, it's really valuable for reaching a huge amount of people at scale, but ultimately you want to drive as many of those people into your private email list so that they all get it as possible. - Love it. Yeah. - Where can people connect with you, where can they find out more about you, if they want to work with you, or get some kind of value from your content? - Yep, the best place you may not be surprised to hear is LinkedIn. - Oh yeah. - So, San Brown with an E, just look me up on LinkedIn, they'll be the best place for sure. - Okay, awesome man. Dude, thank you so much for being here. - My pleasure, I think so, haven't we?