The First Time in History the Human Brain Has Decelerated

And for the first time in history, this is so scary to say, the human brain has slowed down. Try writing without AI. Try writing without it. We wanted AI to think like us cuz writing is thinking, right? Writing it literally means like exporting something out of your brain. It's like trying to go to the gym and having someone else lift the weights for you. It's like it doesn't work that way.

We could be losing ourselves in essence.

Where it might be the other way around where the businesses have outgrown the founders to the point where our brains can't keep up with the growth. Do we have proof that the brain has slowed down? Don't let us slow down further. The expert still needs the expert. Virality can be good, but virality most of the time is just bad because it attracts a lot of eyeballs and it attracts a lot of the wrong eyeballs. So, you really want to target networks, not individuals. That's where you're going to find more individuals.

Everything you teach comes back to one thing, is be human. Be you.

Continue caring despite how much we continue to evolve in this AI world. Just continue caring, guys. It's the one thing they can't take away from us. So, let's not let

Honestly, don't know how to begin this conversation. Jay, of course, we all love

You tell me. We can talk about so much

I know. I'm so tremendously honored to finally have you on. For anybody who's doing LinkedIn or social media, you're just the best coach.

Thank you.

You're great LinkedIn coach. And how many people have you coached so far?

Oh, there's a difference between coached and trained, at least in my mind. Coaching is direct. That would be around That would be above a thousand. Around 300-ish in one-on-one and 800-plus in the community setting cuz I have my private community. And then trained, meaning live sessions, workshops, webinars, that would be above 60,000.

I'm totally honored. Yay. I'm so honored. That's amazing all of the people you actually influence how they think about LinkedIn this thing. As far as I know, you were a rapper and you were teaching, you are a professor, you're TEDx speaker, and you're the number one LinkedIn coach. And you help people build brands and businesses well. What do you want people to know you for?

I just want to be known for helping folks do what they thought they couldn't. That's literally what I want to be known for. Whether you think of me as a coach, whether you think of me as an inspirational guru or something, whether you think of me as a business mastermind, I really don't care. Once it's all said and done, I just want it to be said that this guy has helped change people's lives. That's what I care about. Genuinely. And that's how I approach my business, all of my businesses. Same exact playbook. I just want to be as generous as I can be with my knowledge. I want to be very clear and very direct and very actionable with how I teach and how I coach. And yeah, I want you to feel like every session is a kick in the butt, pardon my language.

I never sugarcoat things. As positive as I am and as uplifting as I am, I will never sugarcoat anything. I will give it to you straight. And yeah, that's what I want to be remembered for. Just a clear, actionable, very helpful guy once it's all said and done. The way I like to say it is I want to inspire millions to help billions. So, yeah, I guess that's the mission.

So, the framing is if I want to help, whatever I'm doing, building something or doing a business, whatever it is, if I want to help more people, then you could be someone who can help me.

No, 100%. It's if you're running a business and your product or your service or whatever you're selling is helpful to others, I guess I'm the guy you come to. Then we position you correctly in the market in your particular niche, whatever that is. We build the brand on the platform, primarily LinkedIn. It's beyond LinkedIn. And then we focus on the business growth. Meaning taking the offer, funneling it, scaling it, figuring out all the little bits and pieces regarding pricing and how to actually get people to buy more and sell more. So, yeah, it's the whole thing. It's It starts with positioning you, the individual or the company, but it really ends up being just helping and influencing, impacting millions out there with your product and with your business.

Yeah, I didn't know that you have actually a deeper coaching around the business setting and the positioning and things like that.

Yeah, it's The way I like to say it as is always like brand and business. I never wanted to put myself in the LinkedIn bubble. Because LinkedIn is just a starting point for me and what I do in the business with the coaching. Like even in the community, it's like we have weekly sessions. We have coaching sessions. Like some sessions, certain sessions, we don't mention the word LinkedIn. So, it's definitely way beyond that. LinkedIn is just a starting point. It's the playground for all the ideas, for all the brand.

It goes way beyond that. It's like I'm literally coaching someone in a couple of weeks to speak publicly public speaking coaching essentially, but it comes it derives from the business knowledge here. It's like I got to understand how to position you as not just a subject matter expert on social media, but as an actual subject matter expert in person. So, we're doing that as well. It's like certain clients I'm prepping them, helping them prep pitch decks for investors. I'm helping them work on the business plan or an investment plan or It goes so beyond just social media content, I guess is what I'm saying. And I'm very proud of that cuz I've done a lot of business work in the past. I failed in a lot of my own ventures. So, I guess that's where the experience comes from and I can tell people very directly, "Hey, this doesn't work. Hey, this is awesome." or hey, you need to double down on this. So, yeah.

That deeper understanding of business definitely comes from experience, but also just me being you know, being in love with studying and learning and just leveling up all the time. I'm obsessed with just learning. I'm obsessed with knowledge. I don't

It's very relatable. I feel the same like I always want to learn something and I do think you have tremendous experience to share. Let's come back to the playground. We're talking about the LinkedIn, right? That's where it all started, isn't it? I talked with a lot of tech founders. Not all of them as post on LinkedIn, if that's what you think is a starting point. Actually, I would say most don't.

I know. I've had experience working with tech founders. Yeah, it's I feel like the industry doesn't push them to. There's the old school way of running tech businesses and SaaS companies and just tech brands overall, whether it's products or whether it's software. Feel like the old school way is go to Product Hunt, go to all these places where it's like the starting point, then conferences, then do the big push all around the world, travel as much as you can. If you can get a media pull, PR and all the articles, get mentioned and then SEO, get ranked in certain types of lists and top 10 this, top 100 this and you just I guess people are building visibility the harder way, in my opinion. Cuz all of that is like super hard and very long term. It's like there's no guarantee that it'll work. Whereas why we start with LinkedIn as a platform for visibility, it's like it's a hundred times easier and you're literally talking directly to the people you want to talk to anyhow.

It's all the other founders, they're there. The problem like you said, not a lot of them are posting. So, you feel like if you're not posting either, it's like why would I? Why would I? Cuz no one else is doing it. But the problem is if nobody's doing it, no one has the visibility. But then the second someone starts, it's like it snowballs cuz then you're pulling in all these other founders into or investors or whoever your target audience is in this case. You're pulling them in these new conversations that didn't exist before.

And the bigger picture is you're now the trailblazer of an entire industry or your particular niche cuz you're the one who started it. You're the one where the snowball effect started with, right? So, if you just end up positioning yourself correctly, number one, and then posting content here and there, number two, and then really engaging with other people in the comments and in the DMs, it's like all the stuff that we just listed outside of LinkedIn, the SEO stuff, the articles, the Product Hunts of the world, like you don't even need to do that at that point. It's like your product can just survive based off of your exposure to the right people. And it's a it's there's an educational gap I feel like between what we know as coaches and what the tech world seems to be doing as a best practice or as a regular accepted practice. And I feel like that's where a lot of the work needs to be done. And I feel this conversation is exactly that. This is the work that we need to do. We need to tell people, "Hey, there's an easier way."

You don't need to go through hoops and peaks and valleys to place your product out out there in the market. Literally just use LinkedIn, talk to people. It's like the people are there.

Yeah, I've tried the PLG motion and then the PLG SLG and trying to go to all the channels and do all the things that needed to do. But here's how I imagine as a technical founder what I'm going to do for doing LinkedIn go-to-market. And maybe you can criticize how I'm thinking about it.

Yes, absolutely. Let's do it.

Okay. So, day one. So, let me optimize my profile. I'm starting a new company. I have a new product. At least it has to be on my LinkedIn, right? And maybe change the banner or something. And week one, I will batch write 30 posts in one setting and schedule them over the next 60 days. So, I have two or every other day I have a post out. Maybe some of the posts I can run if it performs well, I can run LinkedIn ads to boost it. Meanwhile, I want to hire a virtual assistant to help me comment on 20-30 posts a day. That's your recommendation. And what else can I do? Maybe in six three months, six months, I can check back on the measurement. Maybe my growth, impressions, follower counts. What do you think of my strategy?

All of that is good. All of that is necessary. Before all of that, I would advise you look at the funnel. Like, where are you going to be sending people? Cuz when you say optimize the profile, what really matters with optimization of the LinkedIn profile is where are you sending people? Cuz if they land on the profile, they now have to land somewhere next. Now, where is that next spot? For a lot of tech founders, the next spot is the homepage of the product. And in my experience, that is a very wrong, incorrect place to send people to. Why? Because there's too many buttons, the navigation is stacked with other menus and other pages. You want to send them to exactly the page where they can give you the money easily. Or where they can do exactly the thing, whether it's you if you're building a waitlist, send them to the freaking waitlist page, man. You don't send them to the homepage for them to find the waitlist page. Send them to the waitlist page if you even if you got to repurpose the homepage, like copy-paste it and then just delete some parts that are not necessary.

Send them there. So, that's crucial. But if you're past the waitlist stage, past the pre-launch stage, if you're already launched, if you're already in the market, send them to the page where it's like the easiest and the fastest for them to give you money. It's simple as that. I'm going to keep it blunt. The way I like to approach it with all of my clients is we create custom pages. So, all of the homepage stuff that you have, all of the service pages, that exists. That's great for SEO, that's great for everywhere else you have your visibility and wherever your traffic comes from. The way we like to do it is we like to take the best page and we like to create a and we're literally going to label it LinkedIn landing page in the URL. So, we're going to create a very specific LinkedIn landing page that only exists in your LinkedIn profile link, in your featured link and in the blue link at the top of your profile.

Nowhere else is that page indexed cuz we want to make sure that the traffic that comes from LinkedIn. See, just a little segue here and I cuz I have to mention this, there's a bit of a difference between the traffic you get from all the other places and the traffic you get from LinkedIn cuz chances are people will already be familiar with a lot of the stuff you've talked about in your posts, in your comments, and in your conversations with people. So, you don't necessarily need to re-educate them on the page itself. So, that's why it matters that we create a very specific page for just the LinkedIn traffic. And it's going to be much shorter compared to all the other pages that you have publicly and the pricing links are going to come up much sooner on the page itself. It's not going to be buried at the bottom. So, that's typically how we structure it for clients and it works really well cuz again, the basically the gist of the communication happens before they ever land on the page. The page is just the conversion point where they just pay. It's here, where do I go?

What's the price? Click, done. Versus the other way is like you have to build visibility elsewhere, then you send them to the homepage so that they can learn about the product basically from scratch and got to tell them more but with LinkedIn posts as I'm sure, you can just use one post to tell them about one feature, another post to tell them about another, and things like that. So, you're pre-communicating and you're pre-educating so that when you finally send them to a landing page that you've chosen, all of that doesn't have to happen from scratch. So, yeah, that's how we structure it typically.

Well, that's a very interesting. Basically, every post is my landing page and I just

Literally.

My call to action in that little blue link in my profile under my name and people go there and it's very easy to convert.

Exactly. But, you have to think about it that way. Like, the way you've said it just now is literally the correct way to do it cuz like you said, on LinkedIn if you're using LinkedIn Premium, for those of you who don't know, there's a blue link that sits right underneath your name in the home feed. We're not talking about the profile. They don't even have to land on the profile. When they're reading your LinkedIn post in the main feed, the link that you want to send them to is sitting right atop the post, right underneath your name. So, the post itself is like a lead magnet. So, you're just getting them to click above, right? So, at that point they don't even have to get on the profile first, then on the landing page. They can just click up there. So, yeah, it's you just got to approach it very strategically. But again, a lot of people don't think about these teeny, tiny little bits when they're writing content on LinkedIn. Like you said, you might just sit down and you're going to write 30 pieces of content.

You're going to schedule it out and then it's yeah, let's see which one works. But, no, it's every single one of those 30 needs to be a little bit more thought through. Every single one. You got to connect it to your funnel. You got to connect it to your calls to action. You got to connect it to some sort of general cuz if you're not, you're just guessing and you're hoping all of the 30 work. But, if you know exactly where to push them, if you know exactly what the user behavior is and as they're scrolling through the main feed and they see the post, it's like you got a link up there. If you're telling them about a certain problem, push them to a page that literally mentions that problem right in the hero banner of the page. Whenever they click, it's Oh my god, I just read this. The brain doesn't think that, but the brain feels familiar cuz they've just read it 10 seconds ago in a post, then they click and it's wow, you're now telling them that thing again in a much stronger, punchier way.

So, you're reinforcing the idea in their mind. I feel like I'm giving you like a copywriting 101 course but I love talking about this cuz it's genuinely all psychology, right? It's user behavior. And you got to approach every little post, just give it that little 10% extra thought that not a lot of people will. I know this for a fact. No No one goes this deep into content. I do cuz I love it and it works.

So many founders struggle with this copywriting 101. Not just on their landing page, right? On their landing page it's hard. When I ask them like how do you explain what you're building to let's say an elementary schooler, they also struggle. And then when they write posts, I don't see that coming out either. You know what I'm most commonly seeing on from tech founder posts? It's comment on news. And we have a new feature. Here's what it is. And very lengthy technical details, very hard to understand. Those are most common ones.

I'll give you a shortcut. Can I give you a shortcut?

Give me a shortcut, yeah.

So, for anyone who's struggling to communicate the value of their product, whether it's a certain feature, whether it's the entire product, whether it's the entire business, the easiest shortcut for this is don't think about the starting point cuz everything you've just now listed is the starting point. The feature is the starting point. But what's the outcome? What's the ultimate result? What are you fixing for me? Start there. Start at the end. In psychology this is something that is so useful because you're immediately helping them paint the picture of what needs fixing in their life, in their workflow, in their daily operations, right? Versus hey, I built something but now their mind has to fill the gaps. Their mind is thinking, okay, how does this really help me?

And now they're visualizing what their process looks like, how they would be using it in their little individualized use case so that they could come to the conclusion oh here's the outcome here's how it could help me but when you start at the outcome for them they can immediately relate to that so the best way to think about these outcomes is three ways help people save stress time and money whichever one of the three you choose is going to be a banger cuz those three I feel like are the biggest worries for people about losing and wasting so if you can stop the waste stress time and money it's that's all you got to do the no matter how you're communicating about certain features the entire product the entire business whatever you've done for someone start there start at the end and think ask yourself now that I've written this one sentence have I helped communicate the fact that I've helped them save either stress or time or money if the answer is no just rewrite it those three they're the strongest emotional pull they're like triggers to the brain right so if you're communicating all of that subtly underneath all of those words this is almost like metadata of text right is the emotion behind the text if you can communicate all of that you don't forget about the word copywriting forget about the industry just help people save either stress or time or money and you're going to be fine

Does that saver language have to come up on the top because not

Anywhere literally anywhere I always tell people like that's where you start and the immediate next thing you mention is the starting point like for example if you're going to tell me hey we built this new feature what kind of feature it's a privacy screen Samsung just launched theirs okay and my immediate thought is okay what's the point like how is it different from a regular privacy glass that I can just stick on to this but they're telling you can customize every bit of privacy on your on your screen I'm like okay sure but that's still not enough what's the end game? And they're like you can choose when to be private versus all the time. And I'm like, "Huh?" Now that's something. Cuz it's If you've ever used a privacy screen on your phone, you know it dims your screen. You have to keep it all the way up 24/7. And it's even you get annoyed if your phone is on the table, right? Like even you have to look at it like this to actually see what's going on. But it's like if I can pick and choose when to be private, huh?

It's almost like friends and people I love hanging out with and I know exactly who I can speak with on certain topics and who I can't with. So, if you lead with the end game and then you tell me this is our brand new privacy screen with these vertical blah blah blah LEDs in the screen. And I'm like, "Okay, you don't need to tell me all of that first. Tell me all of that last." First thing you told me of pick and choose when you can be private versus all the time. There's no limits on privacy, I guess. You can even say it that way. But this is how you can immediately pull someone in where they feel like, "Oh my god, I felt that. I wanted that many times." Versus "Hey, we got a new privacy screen." And you're like "Okay, what for?" It's like when you start with the feature, you're looking for the outcome. Like you're trying to fill the gap. Like why is it useful? But when you tell me why it's useful first and then the very next thing you say it's because of our new privacy screen. It's like, "Oh damn, this is good." It's like all the gaps are filled immediately.

It's almost feel like pay attention to your users' daily struggle and what do they really hate and put that

Stress time and money. Stress time and money, I'm telling you. It's like certain things, especially if you're a product founder, certain things take a lot of clicks, many clicks, a lot of time for the user. And if you can just shorten that journey where it's fewer clicks, bam. Done. Or if it's try to sign out of an Adobe product. Try to cancel your subscription. You're going to see the pain. It takes

I tried. I tried.

Yeah, exactly. It takes 20 minutes. It's almost like you're held hostage. But, if you can fix that and you can tell them, "Hey, it's as easy as two clicks." Cancel your subscription in 15 seconds. Thank you. Thank you. So, it's you always got to look for the end game first, then mention what causes it versus the other way around, which is why again, a lot of tech founders, cuz they're so close to the product, for them the features and the product itself is the first line Yep. Of sight, cuz that's what they see. They're so close to it. But, for the user, it's like they don't know your product as much as you do. They just want the experience first, which typically is rooted in the outcome, the positivity of the outcome. Then, tell me which feature is connected to it. So, it's almost like reverse thinking for founders versus users or consumers. Yeah, you just got to keep that in mind when you're doing your messaging and your positioning on social media or your website.

I know you say this. It's easier to listen to you and everybody would say, "Yes, you're right." It's a little harder to practice this.

That's why you have AI, though. Margo. You can literally just use AI to ask, "Hey, I built this amazing thing and then can I tell you what it does and how it helps people?" Sure, and then just write a damn paragraph explaining everything it does and then tell the AI, "Can you write three statements which are power statements or positioning statements for a company under 20 words where I am explaining in what each of these, in one how I'm saving them stress, in the second one how I'm saving them time, in the second in the third one how I'm saving them money, but do not use the words stress, time, or money." Right? And that's your prompt. And then just iterate, iterate, iterate and you're you'll see the difference between talking about outcomes and the features, basically the starting points. The feature is the starting point. So, yeah, the experience is the outcome and you should start there 100% 99% of the time you should start 99% of the time.

A lot of us still struggle. We keep posting and we're not seeing anything. There's no wave at all for a lot of us. Have you helped any founder or someone who cracked the LinkedIn Watermark?

The answer is yes.

So, what did they do differently? And what does it feel when you get close to that moment of figuring it out? How I feel about learning how to swim and learning how to bike. For the longest time, I have no clue. It's trial and error and I really don't know what I'm doing. Honestly, it feels like the same thing. You know what I mean?

It really does. It really does.

Feel something, right? What does it feel like when you crack the LinkedIn game?

Cracking the LinkedIn game feels very rewarding, but it really boils down to two things. It boils down to speaking to as many people as possible in the most clearest of ways. And number two, speaking to as many people as possible in the clearest of ways. No, it's the same It's the same thing that I repeated. It boils down to going broader, a little broader in your content. I'm not talking about, "Hey, go talk about the most vague things in the most vague topics." But, we've tested this out across thousands of posts.

We've tested this out across thousands of people's accounts. I have a framework when it comes to writing. It's called BND, broad, niche, deep. Basically, your first instinct as a tech founder is to directly speak to your target audience. And don't get me wrong, traditional marketing does teach us this, right? Speak to your target audience cuz that's when you're going to have the biggest conversions cuz they feel seen. The problem is, that's okay on a website when people are already there. That's okay in an email because you're talking to them directly. They're already subscribed to a newsletter, for example. That's okay at a conference cuz chances are the people are already interested in what you have to do, that's why they are at a conference. But, if you have no visibility on LinkedIn, and you're trying to talk to this niche audience, you're basically keeping yourself small.

You can't grow an audience by always keeping it small. You just can't. It's impossible or it's painfully slow. So, the way we do it is we remove in the preview of the post, which is three lines by the way. It doesn't matter what it is. Three lines and then LinkedIn is going to give you the see more button that you have to click and then the rest of the post shows up. So, in the first three lines, we remove any and all niche language. That's how we do it. Basically, we were targeting broadly. We go broad with the beginning of beginnings of the post. Why? Cuz here's the misconception. Most people feel like if they're just talking to their ideal customer, more ideal customers are going to be shown to them just like them because of those interactions. That couldn't be more wrong because, again, you can burst that bubble by keeping it small all the time. But, your audience will be hanging out and will be hidden in bigger circles, right? If you're targeting just tech founders, where do these tech founders hang out? Where do they go? They're at business events.

They're traveling all around the world, right? So, you have to basically think about it from that perspective. I got to be out there in the world versus just my one block. It's like, "Hey, I want to try the best bread in America and I'm only down on 30th and Lexington." I don't know. In this one bakery and I'm always going there every day and I'm thinking, "Okay, this is the best bread I've ever had." No, bro. Go to all the other blocks. Go to all the other cities. Go to all the other states and countries. That's when you can actually find even more bakeries just like that one. Similarly to our case on LinkedIn, if we're targeting broadly, that's where we're finding all the other tech founders. Cuz otherwise, we can't find them by always hanging out in the same circles. We just can't. It can't expand. There's just no possibility. So, by targeting broadly at the very beginning, we get more people to read our content, right? Think of it as a funnel. It's like a funnel. We go broad at the very beginning. At the start.

This is where most people are clicking see more and they're reading the post. But then, as we're going down the post, this is where we're now using our actual niche language and niche use cases and niche case studies and words and whatever you want. Because this is where we want to build interest of the broader audience, right? And this, based on their interactions now, serves my posts to their network. And this is the point I was trying to make. When it comes to building following on LinkedIn and building visibility, it's not these individuals who you're engaging with or who engage with your posts. It's not about them, ever. It's about their networks. That's who we're targeting. Cuz if Angelina's interacting with my post for the very first time, I want all of her network to see me as well. Cuz chances are there are other people, peers, competitors, people very similar to Angelina in her network as well. I want all of them to now see me, and they will. Best believe they will.

Cuz why? When they're now scrolling through the feed, they will get a notification in the home feed. Angelina Yang commented on this. And they're seeing you directly. Versus I'm only ever talking to this one person and I'm never actually going broader. Meaning, I'm never targeting newer people who are connected to my target audience. That's the problem. So, you really want to target networks, not individuals. That's where you're going to find more individuals. I feel like this sounded more complicated than it was, but yeah.

I thought it's totally different way of thinking. I was worried that a lot of the tech founders might think, I'm not connected with my customers when I'm starting out. I have 100 connections. Well, how am I going to reach those other people who can be my customers?

Connect with the people who are connected with them. As simple as that. Cuz if they're not active, if they're never going to see your post, you got to be connected to the people who are in their network. So, they might be seeing their posts and your name underneath those posts. That's how it works. As much as we're talking about going broad in your post hooks in the beginnings of your post, now we're going to split the conversation into engagement, meaning engaging with other accounts. Same exact playbook, same exact psychology. Meaning, you have to place yourself in the networks, in the industries where you want to be noticed.

Versus, "Hey, dear algorithm, can you I wrote this beautiful post. I wrote 30 of them for the next 60 days. Can you place them just in front of the right audience of mine? Ah, thank you. I would be forever grateful." And the algorithm is going to definitely be like, "Hell no, I have no clue who you are. You're a brand new account or your network is small or you've never posted or you're never engaging with others. There's Think of the algorithm as a human being, right? It's it's just fighting back. It's telling you, "Dude, no, you're not doing enough. Why would I?" Is the dude who came to the court basketball court for the very first time and it they're screaming at the coach, "Coach, put me in." Dude, no. You got to prove yourself. You got to play some hours on the court. Same thing goes for LinkedIn. You got to be out there in front of people. You got to support others first in order for their networks to see you and for them to actually come back to your posts. So, it's a two-way street and that's why I loved your suggestion at the very beginning.

If you don't have the time, if you're a tech founder and you don't have the time to even 30 minutes per day. If you can't sit down for 30 minutes to actually invest in your business, into your network, then hire a VA. Hire a virtual assistant. Don't automate. By the way, big thing, LinkedIn is LinkedIn hates automation and they're actually cracking down on it. They're slowing down accounts. They're deleting accounts even. They're restricting people. Automation, no. Hiring a VA, sure. Because they can now own your voice and they can engage as you. And your account, your name, your brand is still active and you don't necessarily have to be online. To the same extent, by the way, one of the things I wanted to add to your previous playbook about how I would if I was doing a go-to-market on via LinkedIn is the VA should also take care of your DMs. Meaning, if your goal, let's just say hypothetically, your goal of LinkedIn is to get on as many calls with people as possible. Have your VA do all the pre-communication. You don't have to do any DMing. You don't have to do any emailing.

All of that is taken care of by someone else for you so that the only deliverable you have on your end is booked calls on the calendar. You don't have to do anything. You just have to get on the calls if you're the person in this case getting on the calls. And yeah, you can do so much with so little, genuinely. Again, outsource the engagement, the writing if you don't have time to sit down every day and stay there. Again, batch write it's fine. And one thing I will tell you being in the AI space, try writing without AI. Try writing without it. I know, it's a challenge, but I will tell you this, it's a brain exercise and I'm almost obsessed with psychology and human behavior and especially in this online world. And now we do have proof, Angelina. Five years ago, was it six or whatever it was that OpenAI first launched ChatGPT and then we had this onslaught of AI trends and AI tools. There were there were there were several groups of scientists and researchers and neuroscientists who were tracking the behavior of the human brain and we had test groups, subject groups.

And for the first time in history, this is so scary to say, the human brain has slowed down.

That's scary.

Basically, think about it, like the speed of the electric signal that goes to the neuron, like the information traveling to your brain and out of your brain, it's slower. Sure, it's milli nano boo boo boo seconds of speed when we're talking about it. It might seem insignificant, but this has never happened in the history of mankind. That the human brain was tracked slower. And that is scary. In layman's terms, we have gotten lazier because of AI because we have basically outsourced our thinking. We have also outsourced our interactions with others. And we're trying to outsource everything to the point where we're not developing. And my fear long-term for a lot of my clients and a lot of my student is if we outsource everything for the long-term and then everything builds and grows, will the business outgrow us? It's a scary thought cuz typically all these years so far, I feel like the founders have outgrown businesses, not the other way around.

It's like you feel bored. Right? No, it's seriously. It's like after a few years and if you've been in the business long enough, you know the feeling, right? It's like you get bored. You want out. You want an exit. You want to try something new. But I feel like this is a scary start to a plot where it might be the other way around where the businesses have outgrown the founders to the point where our brains can't keep up with the growth. And I don't want to think about it. That's why I'm just telling people keep using your brains. Keep thinking. We have stopped thinking. That's the problem. You mentioned at the very beginning, I'm a university professor and I care about my students. And if we stop thinking and we outsource our thinking entirely, it's a scary thought.

AI still needs the expert. If you're just outsourcing portions of it where it's like it's genuinely saving you time, but you still need to be the expert to verify the information, place it in its right form, and edit the information in the end. Sure, that works. But, if we're doing it solely by trusting the AI that after all these years the AI knows me, like it's writing like me. I know it is. It's dude, we have proof that the brain has slowed down. Don't let it slow down further. This is just a scary thought to think about, yeah. Just for everyone out there. Just food for thought.

It's almost like we could be losing ourselves in a sense, cuz

Exactly. It's like we wanted AI to think like us to the point where AI AI thinks instead of us. And that is idle. I know.

In the engineering community, the argument is an engineer who can use AI really well versus a non-technical person who doesn't understand AI as much, their gap are widening cuz the AI engineers are You heard the story, OpenClaw, people engineers are running it in the back end when you're sleeping. So, you basically have an AI or engine working for you while you're sleeping or on vacation. You don't have to think about it. They set everything

That's true for mechanical work, right? Where things don't necessarily have to involve your thinking or your verification, your audit all the time. And for those use cases, it's phenomenally good. It's hella useful. But, I'm talking about the use cases where

Automation yourself.

Yeah. We're not even thinking anymore. It's That part is scary, genuinely.

The way they think about it is instead of thinking on the ground level, we're thinking as a manager. So, how about that? Like, I can be the managers instead of me doing all the groundwork myself. Yeah. I'm just going to have AI to think for me and I'll think like a manager.

Yeah, that works. That's the part I said, like it still requires your audit, your oversight. You still need to be the one at the end of the information verifying the information. That's what a manager does. But I don't think a lot of people are using it that way. I don't think genuinely, from my experience, I don't think people are managing AI. They're letting the AI manage them. Just Hey, save me time. Whatever. It's Yeah, this is good enough. And it's let's go. And down the line long term, years have passed and you have kept on doing this. And it's like at a certain point it's dude, as an expert, have you ever really moved? Have you ever really grown? Have you ever really experted more than you were 5 years ago? And yeah, for a lot of people, I know the answer is no for a lot of people cuz I've talked to people and you are too. A lot of folks, it's like, they're just outsourcing it, period. It's not outsourcing with management. I feel like the management part is 2 weeks long and it's yeah, this is good enough. It thinks like me, I trust it.

If you think about it, once I was doing fact check when I'm chatting with ChatGPT and having some research report generated for me. So, how I did it was I go through the source, the citations, and then open up the website, and I double-check the numbers code on the research report. However, what I found is this. It's not just ChatGPT give me wrong information and the website link doesn't work. It's It's the website does exist. It's a blog post, and the numbers match. However, I dig the little bit deeper in the number in the source content, and that was hallucinated. Someone wrote that article probably with AI, and that number was wrong. And there's just this compounding error. If people are not thinking, then there will be

Compounding error. That's such a great phrase. Compounding error. That's good.

Right. How are we going to know what's wrong or what's right out there with this

Exactly. AI. The expert still needs the expert. You know? Yeah. It's an interesting conversation. I'm all for it. I'm not against AI in any sense. My point was more about the writing side of things cuz writing is thinking, right? Writing it literally means like exporting something out of your brain and putting it down in a verbal written form. But if we're doing even that, it's you're not even trying, bro. It's like trying to go to the gym and having someone else lift the weights for you. It's it doesn't work that way. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. And then it's 6 months down the line they're like, "Yeah, I'm not building any muscle." I'm like, "Duh."

Do you have a tip for people who are using AI and is aware of this issue and want to be more mindful of how they write?

Oh, I will tell them to have a competition between themselves and the AI. Just give the AI a topic. Sure, AI will be done in 5 seconds. But then you write on the same topic, however long it takes you, 5, 10, 15, 25 minutes, doesn't matter. Then compare. And then mix and match. Then mix and match. Don't let the AI do it and then via editing, you're fixing what doesn't sound like actually right from scratch, then mix and match. That rhymed. That's So, yeah. Do a competition. Whenever you're giving prompt to AI to write something for you, write it yourself as well. Then mix and match. It's genuinely one of the best exercises you can do cuz this way you're still thinking and you're still managing AI. So, it's the best of both worlds versus you being like 10% of the process. This is a 50/50 and 50/50's good.

What if I start with an outline? Like I didn't write the whole thing, but I have

No, start empty. That's That See, that's exactly what the problem is. This is where we've gotten lazier. It's Can you at least help me think? No. That's what your brain is for, thinking.

What if I write it? I write an outline. I write this is my starting

That's what And then give it to AI. But then still finish your writing based on your own outline. That's what I'm saying. So, you need to have two finished products. One post that you have entirely written by yourself and one post entirely written with AI, then mix and match. Versus I've provided the outline, which is 5% of the work. I've given it to AI, did 95% of the work. And it's then I'm going to It's not the same. It's like you're removing thinking from the process, human thing. That's the problem.

That's the danger. Okay.

Yeah. This is just me trying to be very motivational also very caring to the wider community cuz it's like you got to protect your brain, man. It's like long-term. We already see the side effects. Science research has proven the brain has slowed down. And this was based on certain test subjects. There are worse use cases. I'm sure of this. You know, people have really gotten lazy when it comes to this to the point where they feel productive, sure, they're doing more with less. But down the line, man. I prefer my own thinking. I prefer my own brain. I don't know. Could be ego. I just love what I'm writing. I just can't ever outsource anything to AI. I don't use AI at all for my writing. This Everyone knows this. Yeah, at all.

This is really going to the gym that you were talking about.

It is.

Now we are forced to have this to create this self-disci- You have to go to the gym using your brain, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Don't make your limits for when you're

Look, the example you use with the outline, it's like you have a personal coach. You have a personal trainer. They will create the program for you, but damn it, you still have to do the work. It's like you can't have them create it and still do it for you and then at the end of 6 or 12 months, you're like How did I do? Like damn it, you didn't do anything.

Well, I'm not going to the gym. However, yeah. Speaking of writing, I'm really amazed by how you write. Do you think you can show us live like how you write just one post, anything you want to write.

I can, Angelina, but my keyboard is dead. I just told you this before the recording. No, seriously. I charge this maybe once in 6 months, and it just so happened that the last time I was in the studio recording something, it was at 3%. I just forgot to plug it in.

No, no. Yeah, what is new?

But I will tell you this. Whoever wants to see that, whoever wants their posts reviewed and get feedback, they have the Link Up community. Shameless plug. They can join my community and they can get coached, and they can get the feedback directly. And I'm relentless. And we have Victoria Michaels, who's our in-house writing coach as well. She's providing the feedback on the writing, but whoever wants my feedback, they can just message me. I'll be very direct and very ruthless when it comes to the feedback. I'll tell people, "Hey, this is a two out of 10. Oh, this is a zero. Oh, this sucks." And they'll be grateful cuz they're paying for the feedback. It's like it's I'm not insulting anyone by telling them it sucks. I'm telling them directly, "Hey, this is why it sucks. This is what we could do. Let's do it." And then when they fix it, they're like, "Yeah, that sucked."

Like they agree. So, yeah, it's a rewarding process when you're able to tell what works and the psychological little tidbits inside of it. I love just breaking it down like that. I love looking at that in writing versus just, "Hey, is it complete? Does it have all the information? Yes, it does, but it's like, how can we make it at the obsession of a founder, how can we make it even better?"

I have to say that watching you to write a post is like watching a pianist like playing the piano. It's incredible. I have never seen people writing with a keyboard like that. So, I'll just leave it as like a hook.

Thank you.

I would never be able to write like that. I have to practice. Yeah.

It was just 2 weeks ago I had a master class cuz it's like my community when they ask me like I told them like anything you want regarding branding, business, writing, social selling, negotiation. I don't care what it is. Just tell me and I will create a master class for you on this. Just 2 weeks ago we had a master class on building a website from scratch. No Lovable, no AI tools. Why? Because I want you to understand the psychology of what makes a great landing what makes a great website. And I want you to know even if you do use Lovable or some other AI website building tool, I want you to know exactly what you can fix and whether something is done right or just templated. So we had a master class on that and we wrote an entire website within 2 hours for someone. I picked someone from the community as a reward.

I just told him we're going to build your website live in front of everyone and we did. And we did. We wrote it and it was like the writing process like he said as we were going through it the guy I chose him for the website project and I'm asking him like about the business and about the product like what he needs on the website and then I write it and then he's just laughing his butt off in the background. Dude, like the way you said it and the way I would have said it and I'm like I've done this billions of times. I don't know. Yeah, I love to write man. I just it's when it's in your veins it's like it comes easy. Yeah. Thank you. Anyhow, it was just something that popped into my head immediately. We just had that call a couple of weeks ago and it was fun. It was fun seeing people's reactions. Hey, here's how we would say it but then you write it like the professional copywriter, the brand strategist. Oh yeah, it's different. It's different for sure.

Let's go one lightning round. I prepared I think we

You have rapid fire questions?

I have rapid

Oh, I love those. Go.

Yeah, I want to share some of the darkest thoughts I think runs through a founder's brain on LinkedIn and you tell me whether they're right or wrong. I post on LinkedIn because I want people to see me. The more likes I get, the more validated I feel.

That is very wrong. Cuz likes are just What you want to care about truly is profile views. Who lands on your profile? That's what you want. And then look at those profile views and are you seeing relevant people? That's the crucial part. Short backstory cuz I want to keep it rapid fire. I had creators with half a million followers, 800,000 followers come to me for coaching. They go viral every day and then they come to me and they're like, "Jasmin, I'm making zero dollars from LinkedIn." And I take one look and I'm like, "Yeah, you're attracting the wrong audience. You're going viral, sure, but you're going viral for all the wrong reasons." And we took a look at all the tens of thousands of profile views that they're getting and it's still barely 1% was their target audience. So, you got to focus on that, not the actual metrics top line. You got to go beyond. Definitely.

Actually my second one. But, this is real. A lot of people have told me this. I will succeed with my product and my business once I go viral on LinkedIn.

Totally not true. Hell, no.

They're not

Look, virality can be good, but virality most of the time is just bad because it attracts a lot of eyeballs and just in all of our experience in testing, it attracts a lot of the wrong eyeballs. So, yeah. If you feel like the more viral you go, the more consistently, the more often, then the more success you're going to have with your product, definitely not. It All of the data shows otherwise. It's much better to have a slower growing account, but attracting the right kind of audience versus a faster growing account attracting the wrong kind of audience. Cuz what happens in the end, the second you try to sell something, it's much harder. The numbers are lower, the percentages are lower, the margins are lower, and the ego takes a huge hit cuz that's what you based it off of in the first place. You based it off ego and then ego boost and a dopamine hit.

And then at the very end it's like when you try to sell all the numbers are lower. Why? Cuz now you have a gigantic pool of customers and only a point zero zero something percent is buying. That's a hit to the ego, so take it as you please, but yeah, virality is not always good. Yeah.

The argument I've seen is the more likes I have, the more followers I have, I have social credibility and then people believe I'm real or I'm legit more.

That part though, that's number three I guess. That part is true though. Perceived value, right? And no matter how much we try to pretend like we're holier than thou and we're above all of that, people do respond to big numbers. People do really respond to big numbers and it's social authority and I guess that would be the only reason why you could be eyeing more followers on social media cuz yeah, the first effect is real when people jump on your profile, that first impression is oh, look at this person. They're a thought leader in the industry. Oh my god, look at all those followers. Yeah, but only that. It stops right there and there. It's like the first impression is oh, they're a big name in the industry, but then they swipe down to the content and they see that you're getting two likes per post. Yes. So it's like how does that happen?

I joined an engagement pod so my post look popular, right? I just need a social proof to crack

Don't. If anyone ever invites you to an engagement pod guys, say no or say even worse things to them if you want to. Just tell them to piss off basically. Yeah, it's become a plague on LinkedIn in the last few years. I've been someone who's been accused of being in engagement pods to the point I've stopped talking about it in my posts. I'm like I've addressed it way too many times cuz I get the most engagement in the world on average or looking at average engagement rates. And then people obviously are not going to believe it's real. Heck, I don't even believe it's real sometimes. Like I'm getting thousands of comments per post, but people need to realize I've been leaving thousands of comments per week for the last 5 years.

And then it's like that compound interest is real now. The result is real. It's like no matter what I post, even if it's the stupidest, most vague, generic post ever or the most useful post ever, people are going to react to it cuz I've built my trust. I've built my authority with my audience over time, long-term. And that kind of stuff stays versus hey, let me just be in an engagement pod, tit-for-tat, and I like you if you like me. Let's go we can go m for m, whatever that song is. It's like it stops. The second you get out of that group, your engagement stops. And what's the point? That's the problem. What's the point? So yeah, if someone is inviting you to an engagement pod, guys, just say no. That's my genuine recommendation. Just say no or tell them even worse things. You have my permission. Tell them even worse things.

I comment on other people's posts, but secretly I just want them to come back and engage with mine.

That's the problem with reciprocity. It doesn't always happen. It can happen. And I guess that's the beauty of giving. And a lot of people are not good givers. What I mean by this is most people give only to get back. But the beauty of giving is you don't expect it back. You give because you feel like it. You give because it's the right thing to do. On LinkedIn, when you're engaging with other people's posts, you can't guarantee 100% cash back. Receive 100% of the comments that you left back on your account and on your post. It just doesn't happen this way. But if you get one or two or five per That's success. Why? Because that's one or two or five percent more than you had yesterday. Now think of the compounding interest over time. How many people can you get every week, every month based on however many you've left on other people's posts to now stay with you long-term? And when you're looking at it from this perspective, smaller numbers, it's hey, last month when I first started writing on LinkedIn, I was receiving two comments per post.

And then 30 days later, oh, I'm receiving 15 per post. I say, "Dude, that's growth, several hundred percent." And then it's a month later after that is like, "Hey, I'm getting 50." And I'm like

That's amazing.

That's a couple thousand percent now we're talking, right? And then it's like after 50, "Hey, I'm getting 80. I'm getting 100." And I'm like, "What did you say how long it took you?" And they're like, "Oh, 4 months." And I'm like, "Was it worth it?" And they're like, But yeah, you don't think about the long-term, right? When you're first starting out, it's like you want the instant gratification. You want to feel like, "Hey, I've left 100 comments this week. I want 100 back." It just doesn't work that way. The law of reciprocity isn't equal. So yeah, you got to give. You got to learn how to give. And this just goes for anything in life, charity, relationships, business. You got to learn how to give without actually expecting it back. That's the beauty of giving. Otherwise, it's just tit-for-tat, and life isn't tit-for-tat, and it never is.

Oh, that's so deep. I feel like maybe the mindset should be like just forget about the metrics and then just comment on things that you genuinely feel strong about.

Oh, absolutely. People have forgotten how to have fun, Angelina. Truly, it's

I agree.

It's Yeah, they're not doing anything for the love of the game anymore or just because they enjoy it. It's Everything is transactional. And it shouldn't be. Cuz is life really transactional? Do you ever really just get out and drink a freaking matcha just for the heck of it and pay $8 for it? It's like

High price.

No, but it's like you're just doing it for the heck of it. Hey, I'm enjoying it. I don't give a damn. I make that money back. It's I know I'm wasting it. It's But I'm wasting it because I love it. I'm enjoying it. It's like it's the same analogy here. It's like I'm wasting my precious time and comments and thoughts on other people. I don't give a damn if they come back and comment back on mine. I don't care. It's like I'm doing it for the love of it. I'm doing it because I care. I'm doing it because it brings me joy. And heck, if it does come back, all the more reason to keep on doing it. But yeah, you're not doing it just to fulfill a transaction. I feel like that's where Yeah, that's where a lot of the frustration comes from for a lot of LinkedIn users. It's like they're expecting engagement to just happen on their posts just because they're writing. They're expecting the algorithm to notice them out of the 1.3 other billion users on the platform.

It just doesn't work that way. Life doesn't work that way. You got to give more than you take in. So, yeah, it's a deeper message. But yeah, whoever gets it.

I love it. Yeah. Two ways. I run Phantom Buster to connect with people. So, follower looks follower count looks bigger. Or I hit connect connect every day so that I have bigger follower account.

I would say no to both of those genuinely just because I have a particular philosophy when it comes to connections versus followers. Those two are different for a reason. They're two different metrics. They're two different numbers. It's Angelina, I know you, right? We have engaged many times. At this point, you're someone who I'm connected with and who I'm looking forward to see. Meaning you're a connection of mine. But if you're just someone I see randomly in the feed here and there or whose content I'm enjoying without all of the stuff I just listed, without the connection. You're not a connection. You're just someone I know of in the social media realm. So, anyhow, the first part of my philosophy is, have I worked with someone? Do I know someone? Have I met them in person? Have we met at a conference? Have we just connected. So, at that point it's yes, I'm going to say yes to a connection request. Other than that, we can just follow each other.

That's it. We can follow each other without being connected. And inversely, we can also stay connected to each other without following each other. That's the other problem with a lot of folks on LinkedIn. They're accepting everyone and anyone and their mother to their LinkedIn networks, and then no one is engaging with anyone. And best believe the algorithm is paying attention to the first-degree connections. Cuz here's the thinking. If you accept me to your network, you're now a first-degree connection. The algorithm prioritizes first-degree connections, meaning the people who you're closest with. They're going to place the content first to them. And if the people closest to you aren't engaging with your content, why the hell would we push it to second and third degrees? That's just simple math. It's if the people closest to you don't care about what you have to share, why would we push it to more people who aren't even in your circle?

I guess what I'm saying is be careful who you connect with. It's do you know them? Do you want to work with them? Are you actually connected? And the other part is, are they engaging with the content? Are they active on LinkedIn? Cuz otherwise, what ends up happening is you're going to be building a dead network. And a lot of people have this problem. Long term, they're going to build a following. And we have this correlation, it's like the more your account grows, the lower your engagement gets over time.

And people might be thinking, wait, that doesn't make any sense. No, based on what I just explained to you, it makes perfect sense. Cuz you're building a dead or deader network over time. So, your engagement takes a nose dive over time cuz the more people you connect with, the more I guess the more negative this algorithm's score is, right? Cuz more people will be seeing the content, but fewer people will be engaging with the content. And the algorithm is not an idiot. They're going to be seeing that trend. They're going to be like, "Okay, the quality is off. We're not going to be pushing this to more people now, and you're going to be end up ending up with fewer impressions, fewer likes, fewer comments, but more connections, higher follower count. Pick your poison. So, that's why I always tell people the follow button exists for a reason. Collect followers, 100%, but who you accept in your close network, your first-degree connections, pay attention, cuz that click could cost you down the line. You could be building a very inactive and dead network down the line.

And you might still continue posting, might still be expecting good numbers, but once it nose dives, you have no explanation. You're left wondering, "Where the hell did I go wrong?" And that's where you went wrong, accepting anyone and everyone in your network. You should absolutely not do that. The other side of this coin, Angelina, is a lot of people are going backwards. They are deleting connections. And they're deleting thousand They're spending days deleting inactive connections. And I'm like, "You do realize you could have avoided this? You could have just avoided this entire issue and spending days deleting old inactive connections just by not accepting them in the first place." Long answer, but yeah, it's a necessary one.

I think this is the one of the fundamental reasons people are like this is what they're chasing when they cold starting and they complaining about hey, hey, you know, we accumulated this much followers and why it's not still not working.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, just remember, you know, what I said. Followers and connects, two different things for a reason. You can be connected to each other, you don't have to follow each other. You could follow each other, you don't have to be connected. Pick your poison.

Oh, thank you so much, Jay. I know you have to go, but I really enjoyed talking with you every single time.

1 hour has passed like this, man. It's

Yeah. I have more AI stuff to chat with you, but I have to do

Anytime you want me back, just let me know. I'll come back.

I'd love to have you back. Thank you

Just let me know.

Yeah. One of the

Or come join the meetups. The Link Up meetups all around the world, whether in Bosnia or somewhere else. Interview me in person.

Yeah, I would love to. I have to

There you go.

Go there once, yeah, yeah, in my lifetime. For what I love about this, yeah, any any of our conversations is everything you teach comes back to one thing, is be human. Be you.

It does.

This is specially different and meaningful for this day and age where everything is automated. We want this transactional relationship. So, we automate everything. And we're lazy, too. We want to automate everything. We're lazy. We're transactional. We want success. And you're the guy who says, "Slow this down and write it yourself. Mean what you say." Thank you so much for

You're most welcome. I guess the end message I would have for everyone is continue caring. I feel like there's nothing wrong fundamentally with automation, nothing wrong with saving yourself time, nothing wrong with outsourcing certain tasks that are going to save you stress and money to AI. But, once you stop caring about those actions, that's where the problem begins. Do all of that, but try to maintain the caring emotion in you for your business, for the people around you, for your customers and your users and your students and your followers. Continue caring despite how much we continue to evolve in this AI world, just continue caring, guys. It's It's the one thing they can't take away from us. So, let's not let

Yep. Thank you so much, Jay. Really appreciate it.

Absolute pleasure, always.