← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
982: The Strategy Behind “Getting Lucky” on LinkedIn with Liam Darmody
00:52:32
If you’ve been wondering how to market yourself without losing yourself or how to make LinkedIn work for you, then this episode is definitely for you!
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- [00:00]
Liam Darmandy
So I spend my time on LinkedIn in two different ways, community building and personal branding. Happens on regular LinkedIn, socializing, connecting, having conversations and comments and then Sales Navigator is where I'm getting really strategic and really focused on my icp.
- [00:16]
Abigail Pumphrey
Welcome to the Strategy Hour Podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way.
- [00:26]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
To build a business.
- [00:27]
Abigail Pumphrey
I'm here to help you build business you your way.
- [00:30]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want.
- [00:34]
Abigail Pumphrey
I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free.
- [00:38]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
I'm taking all the lessons learned as.
- [00:40]
Abigail Pumphrey
I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business.
- [00:52]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Settle in.
- [00:53]
Abigail Pumphrey
It's time to talk strategy.
- [00:56]
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Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
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- [02:25]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
What if I told you that getting lucky on LinkedIn isn't actually luck at all? That it's strategy amplified by your authenticity? Today I'm joined by Liam Darmandy, a personal brand and business strategist who helps founders build magnetic human first brands in the age of AI. He's the founder of Liam's brand Stand and the creator of the Fold, a newsletter at the intersection of personal branding, AI and innovation. And in just two years, Liam has grown a thriving consultancy and a LinkedIn following of over 45,000 people by doing what most people avoid, showing up as himself. Yes, that does include hot sauce reviews, bitcoin takes, and some other wildly exposing posts about himself and his life and his leadership. But he's also sharing the gold like the things that are going to help your business grow as a result of being yourself. In this conversation, we're breaking down his philosophy on what he's calling manifesting serendipity, AKA creating the conditions for the right people and opportunities to find you. We talk about how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead generating landing page, how to build an audience without cold DMs and and how to use tools to help you scale your presence without stripping out your personality. If you've been trying to figure out how to market yourself without losing yourself in the process, or how to make LinkedIn really work for you, you are going to love this episode. Hey Liam, welcome to the show.
- [04:08]
Liam Darmandy
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.
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Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
I am excited seeing you in the flesh. I've been following your posts on LinkedIn and enjoying your content. So much so that I mentioned you on a PODC not all that long ago, which was the funny banter back and forth on the Internet as a result of that. But nonetheless, you are here. I can't wait to talk all things. LinkedIn still is going to be a main point of chat for today, but I do have to ask you a really random question before we start.
- [04:39]
Liam Darmandy
Go for it.
- [04:40]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
What the heck does hot sauce, bitcoin and personal branding have to do with each other?
- [04:46]
Liam Darmandy
Honestly, it's part of my personal brand. I have an unhealthy obsession with hot sauces. Behind me Here there's about 65 bottles of hot sauce in custom made racks that I built in my neighbor's garage and painted to look like a thermometer. And then I have a whole cabinet full of them in my kitchen as well. And then bitcoin and all that. I mean I'm just passionate about it and kind of how I got into personal branding. I was just sharing a lot of what I loved online and people started asking me questions about it and that's how I ended up where I am today.
- [05:16]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah, I love having like quirky little Parts of ourselves as part of. Not that they're not a big part of our lives. Clearly they are that we wouldn't be mentioning them online. But I think often those things that you think are weird or random end up being the most interesting things that translate. You know, I have three beagles. People will just randomly send me dog content literally without context. It's just, here's a forward of a cute dog video. I love it. I'm like, keep it coming. So I love that you're sharing those kinds of things. I know a post that got me was you shared like something you were barbecuing, but your grill is like the coolest grill I've ever seen.
- [06:00]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah, I have a couple. I have a smoker, I have a Blackstone and I had a high intensity grill. And so smoking meats and barbecue and all that stuff. I married into a family from the south and I guess that was kind of my trial by fire was, could I smoke ribs and pulled pork? And I passed the test. So I started just collecting grills on my back deck. And yeah, I mean, to your point, you know, sharing who we are is so much more fun than sharing what we do all the time, in my opinion. And people will get, you know, magnetized to that, you know, people want to know who you are before they know what you do kind of thing.
- [06:36]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Oh, I agree. I mean, as a Casey girl, barbecue is like in my book.
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Liam Darmandy
I love Kansas City barbecue.
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Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
You'll have to come up and compete sometime if you're interested. There's a lot of barbecue competitions here, so the American Royal is big and definitely something that I think you would enjoy. But we're here to talk LinkedIn, so I guess I will move on. But you use this phrase manifesting serendipity, and I want you to break that down just a little bit as to what it means and what it implies.
- [07:12]
Liam Darmandy
Sure. So, yeah, manifest serendipity is something that I started saying on LinkedIn and people started really responding and it was resonating with people really well. Which is funny because my wife, when she heard it was like, that's the worst marketing tagline I've ever heard. But it's very true. It's a good representation of kind of how I view the platform. If you show up on LinkedIn with a strategic standpoint and you start thinking about, well, who are the types of people that I help and where can I find them? And are these folks active on the platform? Build connections with those people, show them support on their content. They show you support on your content, and next thing you know, you just. If you show up on the platform, opportunity just has a way of finding you. And that stemmed from, you know, me pivoting. I was in operations for 20 years at startups, and I started sharing content on LinkedIn just for the fun of it, for the vibes, you know. And next thing I knew, I had somebody that was offering me an opportunity to pivot my career into marketing. And I thought for the longest time that that ship had sailed. I was like, I've been in operations for 20 years. It's too late for me to switch over to marketing now. So I just started posting content, and then next thing I know, I had an opportunity to fall into my lap. And that is the whole idea of manifesting serendipity. It's like, you show up, you share who you are, you put yourself out there, you talk about what you're passionate about and what you know, and you build an audience around you that might be interested in those things, and inevitably they will be interested in those things and they will start talking to you. And so the whole idea is that serendipity isn't necessarily just happenstance or coincidence. You do have the ability to manifest it yourself. You just kind of have to know how to do it. And that's what I try and teach.
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Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. I think a lot of people assume that social media is all about getting lucky and that, like, you have to just, like, roll the dice and hope the algorithm likes you today. You know, all of those things. And while some of that is true, I'm not gonna lie, there is some luck involved with it, timing and all of those things. But putting yourself in front of those people, especially if you go to the effort of trying to figure out who they are, can be such an incredible opportunity to bridge the gap that, you know, you have been up to this point probably just hoping happens. I don't think you have to hope as hard as you think you do if you have a plan in place. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to know more about your backstory, though, because you know as much as you share about what you're currently doing online. I don't know much about your operations career and I'm biased, but I think good operators make better marketers. Anyway, I can get into why. Yeah, but tell me a little bit about what you were doing before you made it on LinkedIn.
- [10:01]
Liam Darmandy
Sure. So I started my career in recruiting out of college, and then I landed in a startup that stopped hiring basically the month After I got there and So I was 25 at the time. I was like, you know, you all are running around like chickens with your heads cut off and I'm standing over here, brightest eyed, bushiest tailed in the recruiting office doing nothing like throw me at stuff. So that started my career in operations. I basically just created a career out of being a Swiss army knife at tech startups. I was somebody you could throw at a problem, I would figure out how to fix the problem and then I'd move on to something bigger. And that ended up being 20 years of my career. I landed mostly in sales and revenue operations because I am very go to market minded. I've always been fascinated with sales and marketing and human psychology. And so, you know, it sort of all ties together a little bit. Not to mention working with salespeople. That's an experiment in psychology in and of itself. But I always kind of thought I'm in operations, but I should have been in marketing. And I thought that that ship had sailed and I started creating content when my second child was born in November of 2019. That's when I sort of said, you know, I'm spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, I'm not really spending a ton of time creating content anywhere else. So I'm just going to make LinkedIn my place. That's going to be my online world. And so I started sharing content there and making fantastic connections with people and I didn't really have an ulterior motive, I didn't have this long term plan to someday go into it. And in 2021, a CMO at a tech company reached out and said, hey, you know, I'm putting together an employer, brand and talent marketing team. And, and I think that I need somebody who has really strong brand marketing experience and really strong experience with systems and process and automation and those two things are harder to find than you would think. And he said, I think I found them in you. I think you're the perfect person. And I was like, well I'm really flattered by that, but I don't really understand it. You know, I don't have the word brand or marketing on my resume. It wasn't anywhere in my LinkedIn profile. So I was kind of confused. And he said, oh no, I've been following you on LinkedIn for six months. Like I've seen all I need to see if you have the systems and the sales operations chops that I think you do and you can do for us what you've been doing for yourself on LinkedIn. I think you're the perfect person for the job. So I said, well, I'm not going to look at gift horse in the mouth. I pivoted into marketing, took the job, I wrote the job description, then I took the job. And then two years later we were acquired for a little over a billion dollars, which I'd love to take credit for, but it wasn't me. But it did provide me with a little bit of the Runway that I needed to get out and start my own thing. And so that's what I did. It's two years now that I've been doing it. August 7th is my two year anniversary and it's the most terrifyingly exciting thing I've ever done. But it's more exciting than terrifying and I'm really loving doing what I love and helping other people figure out, you know, how they can build fantastic networks with this platform and how they can use their personality to actually close business. I think a lot of people historically view their personality as a bit of a liability online. Like they worry that if they say the wrong thing, they might miss an opportunity. And my whole thing is flip that on its head, like, what opportunity are you missing because you're not talking enough online? That's kind of what I've learned in the last five years. And so that's my approach.
- [13:16]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah, I think yapping can get you really far. And especially when it's opinionated yapping and, you know, sharing your $0.02 here and there. I've seen plenty of people. One of my good friends, Jack Appleby, he's made a career out of literally sharing his opinion about what other people are doing on the Internet. And you just never really know who that's getting in front of or like who's actually listening and paying attention. And I don't know, I think you do a good job of it. But as far as why I think operators make better marketers. So most people who land in marketing as their first stop, they tend to think of themselves as creative, potentially even as an artist. That felt like marketing was a safer career bet than painting for the rest of their life. For me, graphic design was the more sure bet over throwing pots in some, you know, barn in the backyard and like making it at art fairs. But nonetheless, I think a lot of times creativity, while incredible, can be so focused on kind of campaign design and creativity that like, you forget how does it need to work? Like, what are the follow up and maybe even to the point of a lot of marketers are really good at the front end like they can get the interest or the eyeballs, but not so great at the follow through. And it can lead for like disjointed experiences where someone has, you know, they're psyched to work with you and then they sign and all of a sudden they're like, what the hell is this on the back? So I think people in operations tend to think about the full system and in my opinion, creativity is a muscle that can be learned. You don't, you're not necessarily born with it, but I don't know, it's just my biased approach or what I think is true. But I also think it's interesting though, coming from like the startup world and being focused on one thing to coming into, you know, the small business space. Not that you're working in small business necessarily, but when you're running your own personal brand, you're doing everything. And I think it's really easy to get caught up in all the little things. Like usually the longer you're doing this, you're like, I could do, make this automation and you know, create this product and market in this way and do this thing over here. And I would like to think, I know for me, when I first came out of corporate, which was over 10 years ago now, I feel like I was way more intentional about finishing one thing at a time. But the longer I've been in business, I have gotten a lot more spacey and I jump around and do a lot of different things. And I think there's some focus that comes with like being in that startup culture where you have to like be on it, but things are moving really fast and you know, there's big risk, big reward opportunities. I suppose.
- [16:28]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know, it's funny, I spent so much time in operations wishing that the creative strategy teams would bring us into conversations sooner.
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Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
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Liam Darmandy
Because oftentimes people sort of think about operations, operations just as an afterthought. It's like, all right, well we're going to come up with this brilliant idea and Ops is going to execute it. But you know, if my sort of win was whenever I could get people and to sort of say, oh, you know what, like, we should include Ops in the conversations earlier in the creative process because they can actually help us think of ways to do things more effectively. And that's where I think that marriage of operations and creativity actually does make a lot of sense. But I think operations people sometimes get a bad rap because they're very much like, no, right, like this is too Hard. I don't want to operationalize that. It's too many risks, you know, and operations. I sort of pride myself on being somebody who spent my career in operations being very agile. And I think that's one of the reasons that entrepreneurship has actually been a pretty natural transition for me, because I do like being all over the place and I do like kind of synthesizing and streamlining things together. And I would say that I actually spend a lot of my time telling myself to stop tinkering, because there's so much to tinker with now. You know, there's so many AI tools, there's so much that you can sort of learn. And so that's something that I find myself doing a lot.
- [17:45]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Well, if you haven't read Pat Flynn's new book, Lean Learning, you will dig it. It's definitely would help you with the like if you're feeling like tinkering is becoming an issue or the like absorbing too much information without making traction. I really enjoyed the book. It's a very quick read. Or I personally just listen to the audiobook.
- [18:06]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah. I'm a listener. I'm an audibler.
- [18:08]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Audibleer. You'll like it. It's a very quick listen.
- [18:11]
Liam Darmandy
I will check it out.
- [18:12]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. So I want to get into the strategy behind this serendipity thing, because ultimately we need a how. And people tend to be like, okay, that sounds great that I can use LinkedIn as a tool to have these fun and cool things land in my lap. Like, I know I've had a lot of podcast opportunities that have popped on my plate that I wasn't anticipating, but how do we get there? What sort of steps do we need to be taking?
- [18:40]
Yeah.
- [18:41]
Liam Darmandy
So the sort of focus that I have on teaching people how to leverage LinkedIn effectively is basically a four pronged approach. The first is you have to really have a true understanding of who you are and what you do and why you do it and how you do it and who you do it for and why you're the best person to do that job for those people.
- [19:00]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [19:01]
Liam Darmandy
And so a lot of people, I think, get stuck on that point because they're kind of like self reflection and introspection and, you know, it's hard for them to sort of really understand exactly that. So first is getting to understand who you really are and then building a profile that functions like a marketing page for your brand.
- [19:18]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [19:18]
Liam Darmandy
For personal branding. So, you know, LinkedIn has all sorts of different bells and whistles that you can activate in your personal profile. And A lot of people don't really know about it. So for small business founders, for example, there's a services section and you can advertise all the work that you do and you can have your clients rate and review your services, which in today's day and age is very important.
- [19:37]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [19:38]
Liam Darmandy
We're very review driven now thanks to Amazon and other platforms that made us a little bit more analytical. So that's very powerful in and of itself. And there's a lot of small business owners that don't even know that exists, because LinkedIn is not great at marketing the platform to small business owners. They're great about marketing it to job seekers, they're great about marketing it to recruiting teams, they're great about marketing it to sales navigator or sales teams. But small business owners are kind of like hanging out there doing what they need to do. But they don't necessarily get a whole lot of training or coaching from LinkedIn, which I think is evolving. I think that's changing. You know, they have a partnership with Amex now where they're focusing on small businesses. And so I think that LinkedIn is in and of itself in a bit of a murky spot because they have so many different stakeholders that they're trying to appease and they're still figuring out how do we bring all this together into one unified experience. So that's the first piece. Your profile has to really speak to your personal brand. It has to talk about the services that you provide, it has to about talk, talk about why you do it. Give people a chance to really get to know you and what you do and how you do it so that they'll want to convert and have more conversations with you. The second pillar is really understanding who do you want to find and who do you want to network with, who do you want to see your content and how do you go and get them?
- [20:49]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
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Liam Darmandy
The best thing about LinkedIn is that you can find people based on their title, based on their location, based on a number of different, you know, criteria. That isn't really that easy to do on other platforms.
- [21:02]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
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Liam Darmandy
Because they're, you know, not necessarily sharing that information. And so that means that you have a tremendous opportunity to build an audience for free that is filled with your ideal client profile technically. Now, the challenge is that they don't make it super easy to do it. And it's very easy to just start adding a bunch of people because you're like, they have the title, they have the location, I'm just going to add them. But the downside is that LinkedIn has probably 25% of their user base as monthly active users. So it's very likely that if you just start randomly connecting with people because you see them on there and you like their content or you see their titles, that those people may not actually show up. So really understanding how do you look for people who are active on the platform, spending time on the platform, so that's an indication that they will see your content and actually start to engage with it. Because on LinkedIn, that engagement is so important. People engaging with you, conversing with people in the comments section, having conversations in the DMS, that's a very, very important signal to the LinkedIn algorithm that you have a strong connection with that person, and then they'll continue to show your content to them. So that becomes that engine. So I teach people how to figure that out, right? How do you build a network that you want to be building to create opportunity for yourself? The third pillar is content, right? And I put content distinctly in the third bucket because I think that the first two are so important to get right before you start investing too heavily in the content side of things. I talk to clients all the time who don't add new people to their network every week. I add a hundred people to my network every Monday, religiously. Because you always want to be building new people in your network, right? And then I talk to a lot of people who are like, I don't understand it. I've been posting every day for three months and I've only gained like 50 followers. And then I go into Sales Navigator and I put in their name, and I see that only one tenth of their network is showing up every 30 days. That's probably the problem, right? So you have to kind of figure out what's your content going to be about and who are you going to put in your audience to see that content. In terms of content, again, I break it down into buckets. Some this is the ops guy in me coming out. But the first bucket I say is your scope of genius content. And this is like 60% of what you post. It should be talking about, you know, what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, how you do it. These are your sales and marketing posts. These are the ones that you're putting that out there because you want people to know that you're here to do business and you have value to add. The second is fascination content. And that I'd say is like, typically 30% of my content falls into that bucket. That's where the hot sauce, the bitcoin, the puppy, the parenting content, the weight loss journey, like these types of things, those all come in because your network is inevitably going to be composed of people who may someday be your clients or customers, maybe that you're, you know, employers someday, but also a bunch of people who maybe won't be in those buckets. And you have to give them something to still maintain their engagement and maintain their interest, because then they'll like your content, they'll engage with it, and then their network starts to see that they're engaging with your content, which introduces you to new people. So that whole idea of, like, it's a ripple effect happens on LinkedIn a lot. And then the third bucket for the content that I say is maybe 10% of your content is personal. I call it the window into your personal world. And that's the stuff that's a little bit harder to push publish on. It's more emotionally raw, it's a little more vulnerable, but it's also the stuff that gets people the most engaged, because LinkedIn is a very empathetic, emotionally intelligent social network, which is more than I can say for a lot of the other experiences I've had online. So if you share things that are deeply vulnerable, most people who see that on LinkedIn that are engaged are going to want to lift you up and they're going to want to support you. And that's why that content is great, because A, it has a higher likelihood of going viral, but B, it also just shows that LinkedIn is a place that is nurturing. And that's one of the reasons that I invested my time here. I post a lot about my weight loss journey.
- [24:52]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right?
- [24:52]
Liam Darmandy
I've gone from £350 to under £300 in the last seven months. And that's not something that a lot of people talk about openly, but I'm talking about it because it's part of what I'm doing. And you know, that type of content, if you give people that window into your world, they'll come knocking on the front door. And that's where opportunity is. Right? Hence the term. And then the fourth piece is really sort of how to dial it all in together.
- [25:14]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [25:14]
Liam Darmandy
So how do you optimize your efficiency? Because you could spend all day long on LinkedIn. I spend too much time on LinkedIn, but it's my job. You could spend all sorts of time on LinkedIn, but you also can get really, really effective at networking and content creation. And that's what I teach in the Fourth session, sort of section of my curriculum is, you know, how do you use Sales Navigator to really hone in on making sure you're showing up in the right places.
- [25:40]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [25:40]
Liam Darmandy
Manifesting that serendipity. How do you use tools like Opus Clip and other types of video editors and AI to help lighten the level of workload that you have to put out every week?
- [25:50]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [25:50]
Liam Darmandy
You can figure out how to use AI to help you with some of that stuff. You're going to be a lot more efficient and have more time to do what you need to do with your business. So. Oh, that was a long winded answer. I hope I answered your question.
- [26:01]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
No, you did. And I definitely want to dig into some of those things more individually. I think the first step you mentioned, when you say a lot of people get hung up here, I really think there's even people that will say that they're not hung up there that are actually that as the problem. Like the whole root of the problem is they're not clear on how they help or like how they're ultimately making a difference. And I know for people like myself, you do your thing long enough that you start to become blind to like, what you're good at versus what feels new versus all of those things. And then also just you have a lot of varied kind of interests and so you're kind of going down all of these rabbit holes of like, well, I want to talk about this too, or this also sounds interesting and to the point that I even see people developing additional products that are sort of like outside of that initial zone, but now they're trying to market things in a variety of different ways. So do you have any thoughts on how to kind of narrow in on what that is when you feel like you want to talk about more things than that or, you know, you're not quite sure the direction you should go?
- [27:19]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah, I think that, you know, as I would say, that if you are selling a service or a product, right. You have to make sure that you're talking about that service and that product consistently enough that people will remember it. And I think that's where some people, especially people who aren't natural born marketers or natural born salespeople, struggle because they feel like self promotion is icky and they don't necessarily want to be seen as just somebody who's constantly peppering people with self promotion. But at the same time, that's what you're there for, that's what you want to be known for. So I think that people really need to invest in understanding who is that target audience that you're building? What is the pain point that you're solving for those people, right? Like, what are the things that they struggle with that you have the solution to? And how can you create content that conveys that that is what you do? And I think that oftentimes people start broad. I mean, I could start broad, right? I could say I help anybody that has a personality build their personal brand and grow on LinkedIn. But the truth is that I actually have in the last two years found that I love working with small business founders. And there's a reason, because A, they're sort of, they've gravitated towards me a little bit, but also because I love working with people who are super passionate about what they do, but maybe just not quite sure how to talk about it and not quite sure who to talk to about it. So I think that introspection is important. I think a lot of people struggle with that idea of like, well, how do I do this for myself? How do I hone in on what it is that I'm doing? Because they don't want to limit themselves. They want to have as much exposure as possible, but they also struggle with kind of niching down and focusing. And I think there's a blend between the two.
- [29:00]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right?
- [29:00]
Liam Darmandy
Like, I think it depends on what stage you are in your business and in your life and in your social media journey.
- [29:06]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [29:06]
Liam Darmandy
Like if I had 4,000 followers instead of 45,000 followers, I might approach content slightly differently than I do now and I might be more focused on the sales content, the marketing content, really establishing what it is that I do, how I do it and how I can give people a view into that work that I do and that value that I deliver. With a larger audience, I think I have a little bit broader ability to go into the more personal stuff because I have established trust and I have established a following that wants to know a little bit more about that too. So that's why I sort of tell people you have to over index on the sales and marketing content and you have to get crystal clear on your value proposition and you have to be crystal clear on who your ICP is so that you can start building that audience and speaking to them at the same time while doing everything else.
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Abigail Pumphrey
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- [30:32]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Find out more@bossproject.com jumpstart this episode is.
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Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
There.
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Ryan Reynolds
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Liam Darmandy
Now.
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Ryan Reynolds
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- [32:03]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Brought up a really important point and I think it's worth kind of diving into how content might be different because where you're at in terms of size of audience but also like maturity of business in terms of revenue dramatically changes the kinds of things that you need to be posting and saying and doing to build what you're trying to ultimately do. And I think it's so easy to get caught up in thinking I need to act like so and so because they're successful but in their whatever name, they're probably bigger than you, they probably have a larger audience than you, they're probably bringing in more revenue than you and mimicking them. While you may get some like, likes and engagement is probably not translating into sales in the way that you want. And so you're like, am I broken? And the answer is probably not. It's probably that you're posting the wrong kind of stuff based on where you're at. Do you have thoughts on what that might look like or how it might change over time?
- [33:05]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah, I mean, I think that you have to kind of get into a rhythm, like I said, about adding new people to your network who are a really good match for your icp.
- [33:16]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [33:16]
Liam Darmandy
Because social selling is in theory more like socializing than it is selling.
- [33:23]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [33:23]
Liam Darmandy
Like the best, most effective social sales strategy is one that doesn't really feel like it's sales. Because most people don't love being sold to.
- [33:30]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [33:30]
Liam Darmandy
I think people don't mind being marketed to, they don't love being sold to. And there's a difference there. And so I think you have to always be putting that like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, without fail, those are your days that you're putting your sales and marketing posts out that remind people what you do, problems that you solve, who you solve them for, et cetera. And then you can kind of sprinkle the personal stuff and some of the fascination stuff in between those and you have to get into a rhythm. And I think a lot of people resist that because it feels too self promotional and so they shy away from the salesy types of content and the marketing content. I even struggle with it sometimes because, you know, I'm sales. Operations and sales are two very different things. So I think that's one of the things that's very, very important is to have a rhythm and try and stick to it. I get asked a lot, like, how often should I be posting? And I'm like, well, how hard is it for you to post what you post now? Like you're posting twice a week now. Oh, it takes me two hours. That's too much. You shouldn't be spending two hours to put out two posts.
- [34:28]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [34:28]
Liam Darmandy
So the question is like, what can you sustain for three months, six months, nine months? Because I think a lot of times people expect immediate results and then when they don't get them, they're like, ah, this is not going to work. It's not going to end. Like I tell people, I've been building a 40,000 person following on LinkedIn for 20 years. Like, it's taken me a really long time to get to where I am. And so I think people just have to have patience and they have to be consistent and they have to have their content strategy really sort of nailed down and their icp. You have to always be adding more people to the top of your funnel.
- [35:03]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. I think that exposure to new people is such an important caveat. And I think on every other platform, it's not necessarily the emphasis, like, you going and following other people. In some ways, I've even seen people, like, talk about it in a negative light of, like, don't just go follow a bunch of people to follow a bunch of people. But, you know, back in the day, it was like the follow and then unfollow a few days later. And that's just like, so sad.
- [35:34]
Liam Darmandy
Who's got time for that?
- [35:35]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
No, no, but I think to your point, this is like a natural. I'm genuinely interested in this person. I'm genuinely interested in potentially working with them. I would love to see more of their stuff in my feed. And the way LinkedIn shows your connections, like, you can't really tell how many people the person's following. You can only tell how many people are following them. Especially after a certain threshold.
- [36:04]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah, 500.
- [36:05]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, the threshold. Yeah, 500. It'll just say 500. 500 plus connections and then however many followers you have. And so I don't think there's any harm in connecting with more people. But I'm curious how you know if they're active or not, because I've heard, you know, you mentioned the 25%, but I've even heard something like 1% of all users are even posting. And so I know there's some people that are active, but they're not creating any content.
- [36:36]
Liam Darmandy
That's right.
- [36:36]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
So how do you go about finding the differences on those?
- [36:40]
Liam Darmandy
So that is where LinkedIn Sales Navigator comes in. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the Ferrari of LinkedIn plans. It's entirely separate product.
- [36:49]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [36:50]
Liam Darmandy
So it's different platform. It's built for enterprise sales teams primarily to go into market. And it's incredibly powerful. It has 36 search filters versus 12 on the regular LinkedIn platform. And one of those filters is a filter that says posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. So if you go and you look at, you know, a subset of a million people with a specific set of titles and you turn on that toggle, you will see that list of a million go down to probably 200,000, maybe, maybe 300,000 just like that. Because the majority of people don't really post here. So what I will typically do is go into that platform, start building lead lists, look for folks that fit my icp, and then I will toggle that on and then I will actually go one step further rather than just assuming that, okay, they posted in the last 30 days, they must be active here because in some cases somebody could just log in once and see somebody celebrating work anniversary and they might say, hey, congratulations on your new job. And that was the one login for the month, right? But there's no pattern of repetition or consistency. So in Sales Navigator, when you look at somebody's activity section, you can actually see all the different activities they've taken in the last three months. And so they might have five or six posts, but then maybe they have 50 comments. So if they have 50 comments and they show you how often it happened, so I can go in and say, okay, this person has posted 10 times in three months and they've commented 50 times in three months, they're active on LinkedIn. If I connect with this person, they will see my content, especially in the first four weeks of us being connected. And so I will immediately add them to a lead list, I will try to connect with them and then I will comment on their content and start to build rapport and build relationships with that person. And that is how you build an audience. So when I go to LinkedIn and I search for my entire first degree network, if I select the filter of who posted in the last 30 days, it's closer to about 55% for me. Whereas I think for most people it's probably 10 to 15, 20%. And that is the number that you want to increase. You want to as many active people in your ICP as possible to be in your network so that they can see the content you're creating. And then eventually they inbound and you're top of mind when they're ready to do work with you.
- [39:07]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
If you guys are not listening to how brilliant this is, like I'm going to have to come through the microphone and yell at you. Because this is the kind of stuff that you don't hear people sharing like they may be doing it. They don't dare admit that they're seeking out their ideal clients. They're just talking about how they come to them all the time. But commenting and connecting is such a huge part of what this looks like. How are you keeping up those connections? Because I know at some point, if you're adding a hundred new people a week. There's no way you actually know all of these people. Do you have any sort of ritual where you're redoing anything with those specific people after you connect with them?
- [39:49]
Liam Darmandy
Yeah. So that's a great question. The first thing is, when you connect with somebody, first things first. I don't send connection messages typically. Now, again, I think that depends on if you're smaller or larger. If you have a lot of posts that you've created that people can look at, if a really robust profile. I don't think I necessarily need to. My goal is I'm connecting with this person. I want them to look at my profile. I want them to look at my content and ask themselves, is this somebody that I would love to have in my feed? And if the answer is yes and they connect, that's when I send them my first message. And that first message is not a pitch. It doesn't talk about what I do. All it is is, hey, thanks so much for connecting. Really looking forward to seeing your content in my feed. I'd love to know some fun facts about you. Here's two about me. And then I drop a fun fact about myself, hot sauce collection, plus the fact that I have three citizenships, U.S. canada and Italy. And inevitably, somebody, they'll respond back and say, oh, what an awesome way to introduce yourself to somebody. Then they share some interesting points with you. And from there, it's like a conversation can happen. You can say, tell me about what you do, or they ask you what you do, or nothing happens. You just let it sit. And then you start engaging with each other's content. You start getting to know each other through each other's content, if that makes sense.
- [40:59]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [41:00]
Liam Darmandy
And you are mindful of the fact that, like, these are new connections of yours. So if you see their content, you prioritize it. If you like something they said in a post, you send them the post and you say, I loved what you said in this post. Here's what resonated with me the most. And you basically just start networking with these people based on the things that they're putting out onto LinkedIn and whatever resonates with you.
- [41:20]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [41:21]
Liam Darmandy
And so another sort of phrase that I use all the time is, there are no strangers here, only friends you haven't yet met.
- [41:27]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right?
- [41:27]
Liam Darmandy
That's a William Butler Yates quote. And I look at life and business that way. If I can help you, whether you're paying me or not, then I'm happy. I'm fulfilled. Right? So if my content helps you and the way that I convey the strategies that I have helps you and you don't really want to pay for it, that's totally cool. I would rather you pay for it. I would rather work with you directly. But my hope is that I'm putting enough content out into the world that people find valuable, whether they're paying for it or not, and that eventually people will come in and they will want to work with me to get the whole package right. So I think that's really sort of. Did I veer off? I think I might have veered off.
- [42:05]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
I mean, maybe a little bit, but it was all interesting, so I'm not mad about it. So you talked about messaging them when you initially connect with them. Is that part automated or. Oh, you're doing that manually.
- [42:19]
Liam Darmandy
I use no automation. And the reason is that LinkedIn has, technically, in their terms of service, they say you should do Nothing automated on LinkedIn. Everything should be done by yourself. And I am so heavily reliant on LinkedIn as a platform, and I don't want to run the risk of that. When I saw you at Creator Connect Teachables, Creator Connect event, and everybody was talking about ManyChat because there was a representative from ManyChat there, and I was like, wow, what a cool platform. Like, what an awesome tool. But I was like, we'll never have it on LinkedIn because it's probably not worth them investing time. So it's all on manual outreach. Sales Navigator helps, right? There's another filter in your lead list on Sales Navigator that says people you've connected with recently. And so it'll show you all the content. That's the other thing about Sales Navigator that's really useful is that if you save people to a lead list, you can basically filter your feed in Sales Navigator just by people on that lead list. So the challenge with LinkedIn is you have an algorithm that is showing you what it thinks you want to see. And if you actually want to tell it what you want to see, it doesn't always listen to you. Sales Navigator doesn't have an algorithm, or if it does, it's very minimal. Basically what it does is it says you tell us who you want to see content from in the form of saving them as a lead, and then we'll let you filter your home feed by the content that those people have created. So I spend my time on LinkedIn in two different ways. Community building and personal branding. Happens on regular LinkedIn socializing, connecting, having conversations and comments, and then Sales Navigator is where I'm getting really strategic and really focused on my icp. And that is where I make sure that I spend at least two or three hours a day leaving comments on people's posts that aren't in my network already.
- [44:01]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [44:01]
Liam Darmandy
They might be people that I've added to a list that I haven't connected with yet, but I want to get onto their radar so that if I do hit them with a connection request, they are more likely to respond because they've seen my face on their content before. And that's kind of that reciprocity relationship that drives so much of what makes this platform special.
- [44:19]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah, And I can tell you're not using automation, which is specifically why I asked, because there's this one guy, he has such a good heart and good intentionality, but it's very clear to me, he added me to some automated list and there's some AI generated comment that comes on nearly every one of my posts within 24 hours of posting. And I'm like, you know, I would be fine if you're commenting on every single one of my posts. That sounds great, actually. But the fact that I can tell it's AI automated, it drives me insane. So much so that I've actually thought about, like, blocking him, which is ridiculous because I've connected with him outside of the platform even.
- [45:09]
Liam Darmandy
And so anyway, I've called people on it, right? So I generated an image in AI of a robot eating a chili pepper, and it says human or AI on it. And if somebody drops an AI comment on my post, I'll respond with that sometimes and see what they say. It. Sometimes it backfires because sometimes they're like, this is a human comment. And I'm like, oh, like, can I interest you in learning how to write less robotically? But, you know, it's an interesting time because I think that there's so much advantage to leveraging AI for efficiency and for optimizing your output and like, you know, increasing your productivity, but not at the expense of who you are.
- [45:49]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [45:50]
Liam Darmandy
And for me, that is sacrosanct. I'm never going to use AI to represent me to somebody else.
- [45:58]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [45:58]
Liam Darmandy
I might use AI to help me draft a post and I might tweak it a little bit. I've configured it to speak like I speak, so it writes very similarly to how I write. But I will never replace me talking with AI. It's just, I don't know, I just, I feel like if somebody takes the time to stop by and comment on a post or Somebody takes the time to put something out into the world that I find valuable. The least I can do is drop a comment on it. That is actually me. And so, you know, that's where the creative in me and the personal branding guy and the ops guy kind of clash a little bit. Because in ops world, like, I would love to automate everything, but there's just some things that I don't think are worth automating. And, you know, your personal reputation and the things, things that you say online, I think that's one of them, at least on LinkedIn. I think it's different on other platforms. I think there's a different mentality towards it on other platforms than there is on LinkedIn. And we'll see if that sticks around or not.
- [46:52]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
I don't know. I think if this is in your space, well, I suppose it's a little bit different because you and I are both marketing B2B. So like other businesses are looking at it. So because other businesses are looking at it, they're also marketing their own business. And so I think they're more aware of like tactics or strategies like.
- [47:14]
Liam Darmandy
That's true.
- [47:15]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Some guy on Instagram this morning went through and liked 20 of my posts and did it work? Did I click on his profile because he liked 20 of my posts in a row. I did click on his profile and immediately was like, do I just go ahead and block him? Because he's gonna send me a message about something like he has no posts and like 500 followers or something. So there's obviously a lot of tactics and strategies. So I think the more genuine you can come across, the more people are gonna like what you're putting out into the world anyway.
- [47:47]
Yeah.
- [47:48]
But I want to move into a little bit of a lightning round and my first question is, with the manifesting serendipity, what is the craziest thing you've manifested since starting on LinkedIn?
- [48:01]
Hmm.
- [48:02]
Liam Darmandy
Well, I connected with Ryan Ruslansky, who's the CEO of LinkedIn. He had 330 followers, so I assumed that he was well beyond the 30,000 connection limit. Maybe they let him go above, maybe he's the CEO. But I sent him a loom message and I just said, hey, love this platform. I have never been so enamored with a social platform. I would love to be connected to the CEO if you have space in your network. And he sent me a connection request, which was cool. And then two years later, when I was accepted into the creator accelerator program, he was the one who messaged me to let me know about it, which was also pretty cool. It's like for a LinkedIn nerd like me, that's amazing. The other thing is I actually bought my house through LinkedIn. I worked at a company called Homesnap, which allowed me to see when houses were going on the market. And we were Moving from the D.C. area to north Carolina and there was one neighborhood that we really wanted to live in and if we could. And I happened to see that it was going to be on the market in two weeks. So I reached out on LinkedIn to the owner of the house and I asked if I could arrange for my parents to my in laws to be the first people to visit the open house. And turns out that the owner of the house was a direct competitor to my realtor. So they didn't talk. And so she messaged me one day and said, hey, I'm moving the open house up a week. If you want your parents to come check it out, you need to make sure they're here the week earlier. And so we did and they checked it out three days later. They had 12 offers on the house and ours was accepted. If I hadn't connected with her through LinkedIn, I wouldn't have known that the house was going to be on the market sooner and I would have lost the house. So that was another example of just completely manifesting serendipity.
- [49:43]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
I love that. And so random. But I do think super random. I do think the personal connections make all the difference. I wrote a book, Land Art Our House and it made a big difference. But I didn't buy my house through LinkedIn. So yeah, what's your favorite AI tool right now for creators?
- [50:04]
Liam Darmandy
I'm loving whisper flow. Wispr flow. I have dictated 100,000 words in 12 weeks into whisper flow. So think about like how much typing that is. I also love it because it allows me to dictate into any text field online. And that means that what I'm dictating is a lot more like my voice. So if you see my comments on LinkedIn and you can usually tell when they're whisper flow versus when I'm typing them because the whisper flow ones are usually longer and sound a lot more conversational. And that's ultimately what I want. I want good comments that people find useful. Opus Clip is another one because video editing intimidates me. But I love that I can just drop a longer form piece of video, like a recording of me on a call, drop it in there and then it'll cut up Some clips. That has really helped my efficiency with video content.
- [50:54]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. Okay. My last lightning question is, what is the worst LinkedIn advice you see floating around?
- [51:03]
Liam Darmandy
Oh, wow. There's a lot of bad LinkedIn advice floating around. I would say that the worst LinkedIn advice is that you should be taking LinkedIn advice blanket from anybody because your experience on the LinkedIn platform is very unique to you. It depends on the size of your audience, it depends on your network, it depends on your ideal client profile. You know, LinkedIn became a popular platform when a lot of larger creators like, you know, Justin Welsh and several others that are sort of in that upper echelon started creating templates and creating suggestions for how to do it the right way. And that works in a moment of time. But LinkedIn is evolving constantly. The algorithms are always shifting. So I would say that the worst piece of advice is taking somebody's advice just and not verifying it with other people. I think the other piece is to make sure that you're setting expectations for yourself. LinkedIn itself has said we're proud to have an antiviral social culture. Like, they don't want posts going viral. So you've got to sort of have a patient outlook. And I think a lot of people expect overnight results and that's just not good advice because it doesn't happen here. It's a slower build. It's top funnel.
- [52:13]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. Okay. Well, I hope you guys don't find that part discouraging and instead see it as an opportunity to build more instead of just getting that one hit wonder that's not really going to do anything for you long term anyway. So, Liam, this has been one of my favorite episodes, so really that makes me so happy.
- [52:36]
Liam Darmandy
Thank you. I've enjoyed myself too.
- [52:38]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Good. Well, I would love for people to connect with you online, so where can they find you on the interwebs?
- [52:45]
Liam Darmandy
So liamsbrandstand.com is my website, but LinkedIn is where I have all my fun and hang out. So there are three Liam Darmides on LinkedIn, one in North America. I'm the North American one. Although I have had beers and met with the Liam d' Armity from Australia. That's another story for a different time. And I'm also on substack now. Liamdarmody.substack.com I'm using that as more of like a Twitter type place. I share all my thoughts there. So three or four or five posts a day, you can find me at any of those places.
- [53:11]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait for listeners to dive in. I've seen a lot of interest on my end from people wanting to utilize LinkedIn and have been intimidated on where to start. So I know this episode is going to really kind of get the gears going for them. So thank you for your time.
- [53:32]
Liam Darmandy
Thank you.
- [53:33]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
And I can't wait to keep connecting with your content on LinkedIn.
- [53:36]
Liam Darmandy
Likewise. No, I'm following you on Instagram, I'm following you on LinkedIn and I love sharing my knowledge about the platform. I'm really. I have LinkedIn nerd in my headline for a reason. I could talk about it till I'm blue in the face. So anytime you want to chat about it, just ping me.
- [53:50]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Perfect.
- [53:51]
Abigail Pumphrey
Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it, and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me at Abigail says and ossproject so we can share it.
- [54:09]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Okay.
- [54:09]
Abigail Pumphrey
Second favor, to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from bossproject. I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me.
- [54:25]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
If you'd leave a rating and review.
- [54:26]
Abigail Pumphrey
It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free.
- [54:34]
Podcast Co-host / Interviewer
Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.