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Kickoff Sessions
Weekly podcast episodes with the sharpest minds in the world to help you live a richer & more fulfilling life.
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Kickoff Sessions
#325 Jasmin Alíc - The LinkedIn Content System to Scale to $30,000/Month
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Guest: Jasmin Alić
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BigBigga
Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicjasmin
0:00 — LinkedIn in 2026
6:15 — AI Content and Authenticity
9:24 — Commenting vs Posting
21:04 — Intentional Growth on LinkedIn
22:52 — Why Your Offer Isn’t Converting
27:40 — Acquisition and Funnel Strategy
28:48 — Building and Scaling a Community
35:46 — Rotating Offers and Positioning
40:29 — Ecosystem Alignment
45:20 — Warm Outreach and Lead Generation
48:36 — Social Selling and Systems
What Changed On LinkedIn In 2026
DarrenHow has LinkedIn changed in 2026 and how can entrepreneurs make the most of it?
SPEAKER_02The people have actually gotten tired of all the AI content to the point where we now have this term AI slop. People can recognize AI from a mile away, the AI phrasing, the AI patterns, the voices, the AI generated content, visually, weather images, weather video. So for me, like I feel like the biggest trend this year is I have very strong opinions about that, and I have proof, irrefutable proof, that commenting is much more important than posting. Um, to the point where this year, last year, the year before, there's been this increasingly more popular topic on LinkedIn, which is reach is getting lower. You know, a reach is cut, impressions are halved, reach is irrelevant. Reach is pretty much irrelevant. You could go viral every single day, you could receive 10 million impressions per post. What's it to you? That's my question for everyone listening and watching, listening to this and watching this right now. What's it to you? What does 10 million impressions mean to you if none of those people end up on your profile?
DarrenHow has LinkedIn changed in 2026 and how can entrepreneurs make the most of it?
AI Slop Fatigue And Real Thoughts
SPEAKER_02AI is finally dying. Yes. I say this with a smile because for the longest time I've kind of been annoyed at people and with people and by people who are stopping to trust their own brain and stopping to trust their own thoughts. And my style of coaching and the way I work with clients and my students is always, always, always lean into your own thoughts, lean into your own lived experiences and just write from the heart without relying too much on AI. And I feel like even without any rules, you know, enforced by LinkedIn, any like algorithm changes and things like that, even without all of that, the people have actually gotten tired of all the AI content to the point where we now have this term AI slop, right? It's all over social media. People can recognize AI from a mile away, the AI phrasing, the AI patterns, the voices, the AI generated content visually, weather images, weather video. So for me, like I feel like the biggest trend this year is people finally leaning back into their own thoughts. And we see that on LinkedIn. Like the only, and I would confidently say the only posts, not one of, the only posts that are currently popping off on LinkedIn are these very quick thoughts that are real, almost like one-liner or two-liner posts that are just, hey, I thought of this, let me write it down, let me share it with the world. Because there is a high chance that other people have thought of this too. Now, some of it is negative, some of it is polarizing, some of it is really good and really real. But those lived experiences, those moments in your expertise, that's what I've been coaching for years already. And I'm like, finally we can have more of that. Because a lot of clients, a lot of people who want to write content on social media and they want to position themselves as the expert, they're stuck in this rut thinking, hey, what happened to me yesterday or today in my business isn't really like valuable enough. Like we got to think of something more glamorous, something more luxurious, something with a bigger result. And here I am sitting, like, dude, like you do realize that every small result is still a result. You know, it's like just change your mindset about things. It's like you're complaining to me about receiving only 5,000 views on a post, and I highlight the world only when if you look at the views, you got 3,000 CEOs. And I'm like, who's your ICP? Who's your ideal client profile? Who's your prospect? And they're like, well, CEOs. And I'm like, well, there you go. Instead of telling me, I only received 5K views, man, I'm discouraged. I'm like, let's look at the bigger picture. You just got viewed by 3,000 CEOs. And I'm like, where the hell are you gonna find 3,000 clients sitting in front of you right there and now? So those real thoughts are genuinely, genuinely attracting the right kinds of audiences versus chasing the next trend, chasing the next hack, chasing the next hot topic, and then attracting a whole plethora of audiences, 90% of which will never buy from you, and then you'll just get stuck with a very invisible audience. So I'm happy to see it finally, finally in 2026 now. And you know, moving forward, I'm happy to see it become a reality, man, because I've been coaching it for years, and I'm like, yes, told you so. That was my reaction.
DarrenAnd think about it this way, man. The no the nuances that you've developed and the years experience that you've learned, like I call it the setting your scars versus your wounds. Setting your wounds is
Small Wins, Right Audience, Real Impact
Darrenlike highly emotional. Setting your scars, it's the logical response to all the years that you've put into this business. Why the hell would you stop doing that to paste something from ChatGPT that anyone can realize? Like that's what took you all your life to learn. Even if you're young, if you're 21, you still have lived experiences. So I'd love to get your thoughts, dude, on this because you've really, you know, you're we're singing from the same hem sheet here, and I completely agree with you. So, are LinkedIn really pushing against all LinkedIn copy right now? And then my question for you off that is what about all these platforms, man? All these LinkedIn AI writing platforms that are popping up left, right, and center? Like how to write with AI? Like what's your what's your thoughts on this and how will LinkedIn receive this basically? Is your sales process right now an absolute mess? You have a spreadsheet tracking a spreadsheet, you're trying to use a zap year flow, and everything is just kind of falling apart. Well, scaling your high-ticket sales team is tough. Getting to the next level with your sales team is difficult, and you need the right platform to get there. Check out Aura down below and you'll see exactly how to track every inch of your sales process from scheduling your calls, tracking your leads, tracking all your analytics, and most importantly, all the closes inside your business. Aura is the only sales platform that does full end-to-end management of your sales process. This is the main solution right now for high-ticket sales teams to optimize every inch of your sales process. So if you're a coach or a founder or an agency owner, check out Aura for a full free seven-day trial.
SPEAKER_02So writing with AI is never really a problem. It's only a problem if all of your writing is AI writing. Like you never actually contribute, you never actually have yourself in the content. And I feel like all of these platforms have enough developed, enough well-developed algorithms to kind of know, like the second you post something, whether it's a comment, an AI comment, whether it's a post produced by AI, to know, oh, no way this dude even touched it. Like this was just straight up copied, paste, copied, and pasted from this particular tool. And there's a lot of tools like this right now, as you know. Like there's a lot of writing tools that are leveraging AI, leveraging AI, I sound like AI, um, to help you, you know, produce a piece of content. And again, the tools are not the problem. It's the output that's the problem. If you never put your stamp on it, whose is it? And I feel like, again, people can notice. We can all know. We can smell the AI slob from a mile away. My personal opinion is this if you're a very, very like complete beginner on a platform, you just started writing content, don't use AI at all. Don't use AI at all. And I know this is a hot take. Whenever I say this, people are like, what do you mean? Like, wouldn't it make more sense for the beginners to use AI? I'm like, no, because at that point you don't even know what's good. You don't even understand
Scars Not Wounds: Write Your Own Words
SPEAKER_02quality content. Also, you don't even understand your own thoughts. You don't understand your voice. You don't understand how to actually produce something that sounds like you down the line to save yourself time, stress, and effort, when you're already an expert, right? When you already have a bit of following, when you already are in tune with your thoughts and your process and your writing style, then feel free to train your uh GPT to think like you, then save yourself some time if you want to. I'm still not doing that because I have a very large ego when it comes to writing. I've been writing for 17 years, every single day, straight. I used to be a rapper, I got six albums behind me. I'm not letting anyone, no machine, touch my words. So I have a little bit of an ego problem there. I'm very much connected to every single thing that I write. And the more I tell this to people, it's like just don't use AI for writing. Use it for everything else, for the video editing. It's faster for uh, you know, editing something in an image and just generating a background, you know, that doesn't have like 10 people in it if you're on a beach, like just remove everyone, right? Use it for that. Use it for audio, podcast, recording, editing, like something within seconds, but like for writing for your own thoughts? It's like, are you literally at the starting point and you're already giving up? Like, that's the starting point, your thoughts. So, yeah, I'm very much against the usage of AI in that regard for writing, um, especially if you're a complete beginner. But down the line, when you already have a system, when you already have a voice, when you already have authority, following, then do it if you re if you really deem it necessary for your time. Like, does the ROI exist over there? But for me personally, Darren, the answer is always gonna be no. I don't care how much it develops, I'm never letting a machine touch my words,
Sponsor Break: Aura For Sales Teams
SPEAKER_02ever.
DarrenAnd uh the way I think about this too, man, is I split things into qualitative and quantitative, right? So quantitative is numbers. So if you put your PL in, or like for one of my businesses, it's based on like numbers and data and logic, right? We use AI to organize the data because it's binary, it's numbers. Whereas when it's qualitative, it's so subjective that the output is literally subjective. And who is also looking at it? The user. You might look at something and think, I hate that, and someone else would look at think of it and think, okay, that's fine, because they're a beginner. There's nothing wrong with being a beginner, but how uh what exactly what you said? How do you know what's perfect if, or how do you know what's great, if you've never done this yourself? Now, I have to ask you about commenting, right? Because you are you were like literally famous for getting people to look at thoughtful comments, putting your energy into it, actually contributing. And you gave me so much help over this, man, two years ago. And then now my posts are just flooded with AI comments that I believe just
When To Use AI And When Not To
Darrenhurt the brand of that individual, like that actual person who's a successful entrepreneur or whatever, who's commenting on your posts, and they're just it's all just as you say, AI slop. What's your thoughts on this, right? Because you're such a big prolific name. Like, how did your I guess like how did you see it initially come and then where it's at right now?
SPEAKER_02That's a beautiful question. And you already kind of gave us the answer there, where you said people are hurting their own brands by using AI for comments, right? Like everyone can see it. You sound just like the previous three comments. You're just summarizing what I said. Like, dude, yeah, thank you. I said it. You know, like how do I even engage with you now in a comment, in a reply, right? It's non-existent. Um, but when it comes to commenting, as you know, I have very strong opinions about that, and I have proof, irrefutable proof, that commenting is much more important than posting. Um, to the point where this year, last year, the year before, there's been this increasingly more popular topic on LinkedIn, which is reach is getting lower. You know, a reach is cut, impressions are halved, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, guys, just think about this. Reach is irrelevant. Reach is pretty much irrelevant. You could go viral every single day, you could receive 10 million impressions per post. What's it to you? That's my question for everyone listening and watching it, listening to this and watching this right now. What's it to you? What does 10 million impressions mean to you if none of those people end up on your profile? If none of those people, maybe some of them do end up on your profile, but then if none of those people actually buy from you because they're not a relevant audience, but then also if your profile isn't optimized. So there's so many other moving pieces that are not even connected to reach, to the impressions under your post. So here's what I say to people how much time do you spend on a post, writing a post, prepping it, engaging on it, right? Uh talking to people in the comments, stuff like that. It's typically an hour plus per post for anyone with actual good engagement with a good brand on LinkedIn. You're gonna spend an hour plus per post. So if you're posting every day of the week, that's seven hours at the very minimum out of your own schedule on a post. And then at the very end of the day, the metric you're actually looking at is the reach underneath the post. And then you come to me, a coach like myself, and you're like, Yes, I mean I'm getting very discouraged. My last seven posts haven't really received the kinds of views. And I'm like, Well, what do you mean? And they're like, Well, the numbers are lower, the impressions are lower. And I'm like, Well, have you maybe taken a look at your profile views instead? They're like, What do you mean by profile views? And I'm like, the impressions under the post are completely irrelevant. Look at the profile views. That's the real impression. Who landed on your offer? Who landed on your business? Who landed on your CTA? Not on the post. The post is merely a conduit, the post is merely like a submarine, a tube, a subway leading you to the destination. But look at the profile views. And then people start to look and they're like, oh, there's actually some pretty relevant people in here. And I'm like, okay, but how relevant? And then we start to talk about relevance of brand, relevance of messaging, and relevance of content. With content, I also mean comments. So now this gets deeper. To me, this gets a little bit more fun when I'm speaking about comments. Now I'm telling people, okay, the last hundred views that you received on your profile, how many of those were actually from your ideal client? And they're like, Whoa, I only like picked up like two or three. That's still good. And I'm like, no, that sucks. Two or three out of a hundred, that sucks, man. Like your positioning is off. Your engagement efforts
Commenting Over Posting: The Case
SPEAKER_02are down the drain. Like you're clearly doing something wrong if you're not attracting 70 or 80% of the right viewers. So now I tell people, what if you stop posting altogether? Can you still get profile views? And they're thinking about it like this, and they're like, Well, what do you mean? Like, how am I going to get profile views by not posting at all? And I'm like, What's the other big activity on LinkedIn? They're like, commenting? I'm like, Yeah. And I'm like, Do you have to spend an hour per one comment? They're like, no, it probably takes like 15 or 20 seconds. I'm like, there we go. How many comments can you actually strategically leave in the right places on the right topics and place yourself in front of the right people for your brand, your business, your offer, your call to action, versus counting on the mercy of the algorithm when you hit post and then you're wondering why your impressions are not going up? Because you're at the mercy of the algorithm. You got to place yourself there. That's what commenting does for you. And it's easier, faster, shorter, much more effective, and much more relevant, much more strategic for the entire business. A lot bigger, a lot higher ROI long term. So now we come talking about this. Then people are like, Well, I don't have enough posts in my feed to comment on. You see how this is like a step-by-step journey for people to figure out like why impressions are actually irrelevant. Now they're asking, but yes, I mean I don't have enough people in my feed to comment on. Like all of these posts are irrelevant. And what is that telling you? Like, what does that tell? Like, what do you usually do when you see three or four posts in a row that like aren't really about your niche or your industry at all? They're about pizza, they're about nutrition advice, they're about something about neuroscience or whatever. Meanwhile, you're a financial expert, you're a financial consultant, a tax advisor. What the hell are you doing viewing andor commenting on nutrition posts advice, right? And they're like, Well, what do I do? I'm like, hit unfollow, man. Clean up your feed. It's like a diet, right? If it is really bad for you, get rid of it. As simple as that. Empty out your fridge, man. It's like empty out your feed. Really hit unfollow, hit unfollow, hit unfollow. It's also a hot take that I have when it comes to LinkedIn. We should be unfollowing a lot more than we follow people. Because chances are all of us over the years, we have been adding, adding, adding people as connections, and they become part of our first degree networks to the point where we're now seeing them in the feed constantly. But those people's content, it's like isn't really relevant to what we're trying to do, what we're trying to sell, and what we're trying to build in terms of business. So you can stay connected with someone, but you don't have to follow them. And inversely, you can follow each other, but you don't have to be connected. Connect and follow are actually two different features on LinkedIn for a reason. So now what you start to do is you start optimizing your feed. It may take a couple of weeks for you to see like actual, really good like a results in a super optimized feed. My rule is out of every 10 posts that you see in the main feed, eight have to be worthy of a comment. If you can't comment on eight out of 10 posts that you see, your feed is not optimized. You got to optimize a little bit more. So there's several tactics to do that, like how you train your algorithm. Fun fact for a lot of people, a lot of people do not know this. Your mobile feed and your desktop feed, they're two different feeds. It's two different algorithms running it. You can check this, you can verify this for yourself. So there's uh several actions you can take, how you can train your algorithm so that you see better content. Therefore, again, down the line, the entire goal is to get more profile views and more relevant profile views. Like just keep this in the back of your mind. Like we're still talking about the same topic: profile views and more relevant profile views. So hit unfollow very often. Just hit unfollow. Hit not interested. We're good. This tells the algorithm this these kinds of topics I'm not interested in. Number two, hit save on the content that you really love. Save is actually underneath the hood, one of the strongest metrics that we know of for the algorithm because it's so it's stronger than a like, it's stronger than a comment, it's stronger than a repost. The save, the invisible save, much stronger. It tells the algorithm, I really want to come back to this type of content, versus I'm just casually scrolling and liking a friend's post. That's why it's stronger than a like and stronger
Profile Views Beat Post Impressions
SPEAKER_02than a comment. And then moving forward, when you're finally leaving comments on people's posts, don't be forgettable. Treat your comments as thoughts, the very thing we discussed first in today's conversation. Leave thoughts, not reactions. These two are very different. A reaction is hey Darren, great shirt. That's a reaction. That's not necessarily a thought of a thought leader, a piece of advice, something I can take for myself, right? But if I said, Darren, your delts are looking huge, man. Can you walk us through your routine for the front delts? I'm I have you know slightly larger back delts, but can you walk us through your front delt routine? And then it's like everyone who's interested in that kind of thing, obviously, this would be relevant for a fitness coach or you know, anyone who's talking about health and neuroscience, things like that. Um, but a question like that is a direct extension of the post. So now people will be reading that post, whoever is interested, obviously, and the relevance kicks in. And now your comment is almost like a mini post underneath. It's like the main movie and the post-credit scene. So people are sticking around, especially the ones who are really serious about this topic. The biggest fans of movies stick around for the post-credit scene. In the business sense, it you know, the people who are most serious and are investing those extra two or three minutes, or in this case two or three seconds, for a comment, they're the ones who are actually serious about paying. Those are the ones who can easily become clients. So, keeping all of this in mind, now my question to everyone is do you actually even need to post? You see, like you don't even need to post. Now that this is like an even bigger conversation. That's why those impressions under the post, they're not the big metric that you think they are. They really aren't. You're much more better off being out there in the feed, spending your time in all the right conversations, saying all the right things in front of all the right people, and now bringing back traffic to your profile without this is the key part, without relying on the algorithm. You're not at the mercy of the algorithm when you are actually in the feed by yourself. You're placing yourself in all the right places. And by extension, you're bringing people to the main place where you want them to hang out, which is your profile. And if your profile clearly communicates, your offer meaning, what you do and who you do it for, and what the next step is, you're golden. That's your Trojan horse. The comments are your Trojan horse, bring people in, win the battle. That's how you do it.
DarrenBefore we move any further, I have one short question to ask you. Have you been enjoying these episodes so far? Because if you have, I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel to help more business owners grow their online business today. Dude, it just reminds me of like the power of just being intentional, right? Intentionality is just so important. If you're giving throwaway comments, or like back in the day it was hiring a VA to do the comments, and now it's hiring a VA to do AI
Clean Your Feed And Train The Algo
Darrencomments on top of it or whatever they do. But they're missing the whole point, which is intentionality. Even the way that you explain like that making a reference or making a remark about something, it's kind of like dating, genuinely. It's like if you go up and say the same thing to the same woman, it's not gonna help. But if you make a very custom judgment or custom like view, they're gonna be like, oh, like he actually taught. He actually used his fucking brain. And that's what's hilarious in this. It's like it all goes back to you. You're an adult, do something with like a prop, like have agency, have high agency of what you're doing. What what I what I've really observed actually is but how you how your language has changed around some of the content around using the right content to grow your business. I mean that's an interesting observation I've made from a couple of years ago. You know, at that point it was more like building the brand, building the personal brand. But I guess you've probably felt a lot of clients saying, Hey, I want to get leads and hey, I want to grow my business. Because it's the same thing that our clients do, right? They want to produce content to get them leads. And of course, yeah, they might get likes in between and impressions in between, but their like metric is like leads. So how would you what feedback do you have for someone who's in this position right now where they're yes, their impressions are up and down, they're doing a bit of common thing, but they're struggling to grow their business and get leads on LinkedIn. How would you approach a scenario like that?
SPEAKER_02A better offer is crucial. A better offer is crucial for a lot of people. I can't stress this enough. A lot of people do all the right things in terms of writing content and in terms of engagement, but when you actually land on their profile, I have no clue what to do.
SPEAKER_01Right?
SPEAKER_02I really have no clue what to do. And there's three ingredients that I always list. There's probably more, but the three main ones. And I keep telling people in your banner, in your headline, in your feature section, three things need to be communicated. We're talking about LinkedIn profile specifically, right? When people land on your offer, when people land on your profile, that's the offer. Communicate what you do. Whether it's a mastermind, a podcast, a newsletter, a coaching service, an agency, I don't care what it is. Communicate your offer clearly, but then communicate who it's for. Now, the second part, how you communicate who it's for, you don't even necessarily, this is the copywriting magic now. I've been a copywriter again for almost two decades. You don't even have to necessarily say four CEOs. You can just call out the problem. They're immediately going to relate to the problem, right? Because if you say your pipeline's empty, what kind of language is that? Is it a little bit more corporate? Yes. That's how CEOs speak. Or pipeline is empty, right? But a solopreneur would never say things like that. Solopreneur would just say, I need clients, man. I need leads. You see, like it's the same intent, but the positioning is different. So with the problematic language or the symptomatic language, as they call it, you can call out your ICP. A lot of people have a problem with that. They're using language that isn't fit for their ICP. It's the same offer, it's the same intent, but the outcome is different in their mind because they can't relate to the language, right? It's like saying dope and cool. It's a generational gap, right? It's like saying facts and yeah, that's correct. It's a very, very different language in terms of positioning. So, like you said, over time, the way my clientele has grown, the way my clientele has changed, the way my brand has changed and grown, the way my pricing has changed, the way my businesses, like multiple businesses now that we're running, right, have changed, my positioning has also changed. And that branding, that messaging keeps getting a little bit more premium, more premium, more premium, a little bit more elevated in terms of an experience. But now, all of that aside, fixer messaging, you're good. There's still one crucial part missing. And I can't tell you enough there.
Comments As Mini Posts And CTAs
SPEAKER_02Like, I'm not gonna exaggerate what I say. 95% of the profiles that I look at on LinkedIn miss this very simple step. Tell me the next step. Like, you've told me what you do, you've told me who you do it for, but where do I click? What do I do next? Do I sign up? Do I book a call? Do I what do I do? You'd be surprised how many people actually miss a CTA. They don't include a CTA in their banner. They just expect people to get it. They just expect people to feel like, oh, well, I'm offering a coaching service and it's going on for 90 days and they're gonna DM me. No, no, no, no. Send them to the freaking coaching landing page, man. Send them to the calendarly, send them somewhere and tell them exactly where you're sending them. Tell them in the banner, tell them in the blue link, tell them in a feature link, tell them directly where to go. Because otherwise, they don't have that seed planted in their mind. They're gonna know about your offer, sure, but it's not pushing them to take action. I'm telling you, man, I get so disappointed. At least, I'm not exaggerating, at least 95% of the profiles that I look at, they're missing a CTA. They're so focused on premium positioning, good messaging, clarity, clarity. Yes, all of those things are super important, but just give me the last bid, which is what do I do next? What do I click? Where do I go? Trust me, the second we fix this for a lot of clients, like to your question, like everyone's doing all the right things and they're still not getting leads, just insert a freaking CTA, man. I'm telling you, because if you are getting views on your profile and you can see it, if you're getting the relevant kinds of views, like the actual ICP in that list of views, and they're still not clicking. Maybe the question is you didn't give them enough to click on, isn't it? And then you just go back to the profile and then you're like, what's in your banner? Like, what should I do next? And they're like, Oh, you're supposed to message me. Tell me that. Tell me to message you. It's really as simple as that. So if we're talking about messaging, if we're talking about clarity, it's not just about the brand and the offer, it's also about clarity about the next step. I'm telling you, this little fix on clients' profiles, as dumb as it sounds, it's been a game changer. Let's use some AI language. It's it's it's genuinely changed the game for a lot of creators. It's genuinely changed the game for a lot of my clientele. Just calling out the CTA very directly, just telling people where to go.
DarrenAnd I think as you mentioned, right, your positioning can change, especially as one, your business grows and then two, as your brand grows specifically, because you know, you're in a nuanced view where you have a large brand and then your traffic is getting is going directly to your community and so on. I'd love to get insights from you on your actual acquisition strategy. Because as you said, right, some people are like direct to call funnel, some people are to a VSL. I'd love to see like how you think about this with your offer and multiple offers that you have. Because this is the thing, right? When you're a business owner like yourself, you do have multiple businesses. So what
Quick CTA To Subscribe
Darrencan you promote on the front end, right? How do we, how do you make this clear? And then how can people learn from this experience is what I'm getting at here. Are you an agency owner, coach, or consultant looking to scale your online business? At Vogue's, we help business owners scale their online business with content. We help them specifically build a high-ticket offer, create content that turns into clients, and also help them with the sales process to make sure every single call that's booked in your calendar turns into a client. If you want to see more about exactly how we do this, hit the first link down below and watch a full free training on how smart entrepreneurs are building a business in 2025.
SPEAKER_02Beautiful question, man. So, in a nutshell, the more you grow, the more offers you're probably going to have because the more you're going to be looking at new acquisition strategies and new revenue channels, new streams of income, right? For me, the way that's changed over the years is that at the very beginning, it was only coaching, right? It was only one-on-one coaching. And that
Intentionality Beats VA And AI Comments
SPEAKER_02was the brand, right? Yep, that was the brand. And I I've been doing like a lot of work, a lot of great work. We've done amazingly well with the clients and some of the biggest brands in the world, a lot of number ones, number ones, number ones with the clients as well, all across the globe. And I'm very proud to see all of them succeed. But then at a certain point, you get booked out, and people are now looking at, you know, like, do you do group coaching? Like, we can't find you on the one-on-one. We got to wait for eight months, dude. And I'm like, yeah, no, because I don't have the time. I'm a dad. I really want to protect my time with the family. So people started asking me at a certain point when I increased my price a little bit more, like tripled it over the years. Um, and people were still buying, by the way. It's still like the price is never a problem. Like, if you, if someone pays 10K for one hour with you, if you can make them 100, that's a worthy investment. Um, the price is never the problem. What started to happen was people started asking me, like now that I've outgrown the pricing of old, and now I'm only attracting this new audience, but I still have hundreds of thousands of followers who would like to work with me, but they can't because the pricing is out of reach. So, what they started asking, like, can you build a platform? Can you build a community? Can you build anything that's slightly, slightly lower price, but it's more accessible to a lot more people. So I was forced, I have to say like this, like positively pushed into creating a community and launching a paid community. Um, and I didn't want that community to be a LinkedIn community, like that was my number one goal. I don't want it to be a LinkedIn community, no, because my expertise is in personal branding, positioning of businesses, and growing the businesses down the line, not just LinkedIn, just business strategy overall. So the way I position my community was brand and business coaching. And LinkedIn is just a platform that we use at the very beginning, and then we scale further. Some calls we don't even mention the word LinkedIn on the calls. So, what I started to do at the very beginning, obviously, there was huge interest for that. And I built a wait list and we just sold to the wait list. I didn't even have to launch. We literally sold out before they won. I had
Offers, ICP Language, And Clear CTAs
SPEAKER_02a plateau at the very beginning. I was like, let me just get 100 users in, and because I really wanted to be a little bit more intimate. And the way I've set it up is like I can grow this to it to any number of people, even a thousand, it would still be very intimate. But at the very beginning, I'm like, let's it's month one, day one, a hundred people, and we're good. Sold within 22 minutes, quite literally, 22 minutes on the wait list. Like, I just let sent it, and then people are immediately messaging me like, dude, it says sold out. And I'm like, okay, I gotta do this. Let's raise the ceiling. Then I was like, let's do 150. Dude, it took like a couple minutes only. And then I stopped at 250 and I kept the wait list open. So 250 was day zero. And and the very first day when I launched, I just told people, hey, link up is live. It's finally live. The link up community is live, but there's no spots. And then, like, you can sign up here, here's the wait list, blah, blah, blah. Until I changed something in my pricing during the case, so this is like a real testimony from a founder, and now I coach this to other people who also want to launch paid groups and paid communities. Depending on how much trust you have from your audience, monthly payments are gonna be a killer of your revenue. I deleted every monthly tier that I had, and I only saved a yearly plan. So that's the only subscription you could buy. One year, that's it. No one month, no three month, no six month, just one year, and that's it. I'm telling you, Darren, when I killed all the monthly ones and I only kept the yearly, that also now repositioned the community. We saw a spike in the analytics immediately that first week. We saw a spike because people took it a lot more seriously. It wasn't just, hey, let me get in, let me, you know, yes, get some value out of it. Maybe I'll use it, maybe I won't. And I also changed my messaging. I also changed my messaging to the point where I really started now repeating and repeating a little bit more frequently the things I was already saying for years, which is treat LinkedIn, treat your personal brand as a part-time job for the next six months, see what happens. That's a quote I've said hundreds of times over the years. Treat it like a part-time job for six months, see what happens. So, minimum one year, because we want those six months for you for you to start seeing results. And then after the one year, it's like, hey, do we continue? You know, because I know you're gonna win. I know 100% you're gonna win. 100%. 100%. And the second I changed it to yearly, it was a nice spike. But then obviously, people are there. We're we're just constantly growing and growing and growing. I'm never doing like sales or anything like that. Um, Black Friday came. I didn't have any offers, nothing like that. So I did a LinkedIn live where I was uh this was like right before New Year's, actually. Um, I did a LinkedIn live. I invited a bunch of my members to the live, you know, to the video stream, and they were just talking about the community. And they were like, can we actually give a discount to some of these people, man? And I'm like, you know what? Damn it. Like just during this live, just during this one hour that I'm doing it, go to my profile. There's gonna be a link which gives you a gift. It was like a referral link, more so to make money for the for the members, right? And people bought so many of those during the live, man. And the other thing I did during the live was I launched Lifetime because a lot of my members were asking me, like, dude, when are you gonna do lifetime? When are you gonna do lifetime? Like, we're still too young, we're barely a year old. So I waited until we were at a year and then a couple months, and then I launched Lifetime. Right now, the way I'm looking at my analytics, I can actually come back and send you um the real number, but I think around 40% of all of our members are on lifetime, which is nuts to say out loud. Like 40% of all people are on lifetime, they're tied in. So though that's my sales strategy. Like, that's the entire thing. Like being open about who it's for, being open about the commitment. Like, heck, even on my website, like my funnel is very simple. LinkedIn activity, go to the LinkedIn profile, and I send you to one landing page. That's it. Same goes for my coaching, same goes for my community, same goes for my speaking, same goes for anything I do. Content, profile, one link. That's it. No extra funnels, no extra downsells, upsells, nothing. And so just one more change.
DarrenJust for clarity on that, when you're running those funnels, do you promote one at a time? Sorry. So let's say it's a community. One at a time always, yes. And how do you how do you swap between them? What I mean by this is like let's say you're running something for the week of the 6th, 6th of February, where we are now. Would you just swap it out and then just swap the the key, the key link basically in your
One Link, One Funnel, Less Friction
Darrenprofile?
SPEAKER_02Good question. Uh, for me, it takes a little bit longer. Um, like the cycle is slightly longer. Like right now, I don't need to sell my coaching. I'm I always say like I'm always booked out. Like, I have enough clients on a retainer and I'm coaching them to the point where I have deleted my calendar now. Like, if you really want to get coached by me one-on-one, you have to message me and we have to find some time outside of the calendar. Like, we literally have to look at times like when I'm traveling and I have this date free and I'm like at a hotel lobby, because that's it. Like the coaching is full. So I'm no longer promoting the coaching. The positioning of the profile now, like even the banner and the call to action are just for the um just for the for the community. Right? So for me, it changes based on the season. And for example, if I have um I've co-founded a software product, uh, which is called Link Bound, like during the relaunches, I change my profile to match that positioning. So I will change the banner, I will change the links again to match Link Bound to promote that. The second that little relaunch period is over, I go back to the main offer, which at this point in time is the community. Then if I'm doing any sort of speaking tours and I just want to get, you know, invited, I'll just write one post about it, man. You know, and people are gonna reach out. But yeah, this year I don't even have to do that anymore. So I feel like because of all of my offers, because it's been such strong positioning over the years, the coaching, I've kept that as the main offer till to the point where it got booked out, and now we're just cruising. I don't have to talk about it anymore. The keynotes, I've done so many over the years. And now I don't even have to talk about it. Now I'm organizing my own events. We have a team organizing it, and I'm just traveling to countries and I'm saying, hey, Yasmin Alic is organizing a mastermind. It's no longer, hey, Yasmin Alic is coming to speak at this conference. It's Yasminalich is organizing his own mastermind. So I'll just write a post about it or they'll run ads locally or whatever. That's how we do it. I don't need to do anything on the profile. So the way my funnel has changed over time is right now, the only offer I'm actually pushing is the community. I don't have to push anything else because it's just cruising, it's just doing well by itself on its own. And I'm kind of proud, man. It's like it's stress-free content creation, it's stress-free, you know, business management. All you really do is, you know, jump on LinkedIn, write a write those posts, engage in those comments, engage in those DMs. And no, I don't have VAs. I don't have any assistance for that. I keep telling people it's like the only person who has access to my LinkedIn profile is me. Not a single soul. The only person who ever types a single key, whether it's a post, a comment, a reply, a DM, is me. There's no machine, there's no tool, there's nothing. It's always me. And I like to keep it that way. And yes, for anyone wondering, I do leave a lot of deals on the table. I don't get to respond to every comment. I don't get to respond to every DM, but it is what it is. We don't need enough. We're doing really well in the businesses, you know, we're expanding the team globally. And yeah, can't complain. I'm not too obsessed about making gazillions of dollars, man. I'm, you know, we're good. We're good.
DarrenUh I I think even from the first time I met you, it's like it's always been family first, and then you're building the business around it because you're at that point in life, right? Where it's like you've dude, you've been doing this for 17 years, right? As in you've gone through a lot of these evolutions, and it depends on the season that you're in. Now, I think you made a very interesting observation, which is similar to us and a little bit different, of course, right? But it's you mentioned that you co-founded like a software company, Link Up, now uh or link bound, sorry. And yeah, link I think probably what's interesting here is that fits your ecosystem, I imagine, and that fits your content, and that fits what you do and how you help people. So it's not like you have a nail salon and then you have a lawyer business and then you're a financial analyst. There is alignment in your ecosystem, which means that you can show up every day,
Seasonality, Focused Offers, And Capacity
Darrenhammer your posts, hammer your comments, and it's like, ah, I want to use this tool, or I want to use your coaching or your community. Oh, wait, you're coming to Belgium. Let's go to Belgium to the event. And I think that's a tread that sometimes people kind of miss is that your offers and your businesses, it's not offers, they're businesses. They're aligned, there's alignment between them. Can you tell me a bit more about this offer as well? I think that's very interesting because for your ecosystem, it's gonna be very valuable, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. And and and again, the topic of relevance, right, kicks in. Like it has to be relevant to you. Like, I'm not just saying yes to a partnership or yes to a sponsorship or yes to a shared tie, you know, money deal under the table. Um, just just one fun fact. I've actually just looked it up right now because I wrote a post about it, which I never published. I write every day, I write a lot, man. I just like 99% of my stuff is never published. I'm just looking at the post. The hook I wrote was in 2025, I left between, this is between on the low end and a high end, 250,000 and half a million dollars on the table. Simply because I said no to sponsorships. I I get, as you can imagine, I get circled around by a lot of these companies, tools, new AI stuff, you know, just established brands as well. But I don't say no. I don't do a lot of sponsored stuff, man. Just because I'm a very light guy in terms of tools, I don't use a lot of tools. It's like someone asked me, like, why didn't you say yes to Notion? I'm like, I use my notes. It would be very inauthentic of me to promote Notion and Notion AI, right? The deal was on the table. I it's like, I don't use it. I love Notion, by the way. It's a phenomenal tool. It's literally one of the best for organizing and creating anything custom, right? But I don't personally use it. So I feel really bad promoting something and it's just it's a lie for me to say, hey, you should be using this. It's great, it's great, blah, blah, blah. I don't even use it. I just use notes, man. It's fine. It's Google Drive. That's it. So speaking of that, when we were looking at launching a tool, I was building something for myself, primarily. Um, for years, like as you just heard from my previous answer, like I value manual work and I value that manual connection. I don't have assistants, I don't have VAs. So every bit of research when it came to leads and every bit of communication when it came uh to the DMs was manual. And my approach wasn't cold, cold, cold, like reaching out to strangers and pitching. My approach was warm, meaning first establish a relationship in the comments, then, based on the number of interactions we've had with XYZ people, then reach out because the chances of them responding, the CTR is going to be through the roof. And over the years, my CTR on average has been 91%. 91% response rate for LinkedIn DMs that I send to people. Why? Because it's never cold outreach. It's, hey, Darren and I have been chatting in the comments for months and weeks, and I've been tracking it, right? And it's like 10 interactions at a certain point. I'm like, yeah, at this point, like, let me just reach out to the man and just say, hey, Darren, if you're ever interested in, you know, doing a podcast together, we can do it. And it's like three seconds later, he responds, dude, yes. You know, and the same goes with clients. If you're interested in XYZ, can I send you something? Dude, yes. As simple as that. So we just built a tool for that. The tool just analyzes the engagement, it counts the interactions basically right there because it's all public-facing information, right? There's no scraping going on. It's just all everyone can see this. Everyone. Um like I can go to your profile, you can come to my profile and see all the likes, comments, repos. So we're just looking at the public-facing information. There's no scraping going on, like behind any layer. So it's hopefully safe,
Aligned Ecosystem Over Random Revenue
SPEAKER_02you know? And um, it gives you a relationship score and it creates a list of warm leads for you. And now the new version is there's an extra step right before that, which is you plug in your offer to the little AI system that we have built in. So you're gonna tell it about your. Offer, you're going to tell it about your very ideal ICP. And then all of those previous lists that we've had, now they get even further scrunched down and filtered to only match your actual relevant ICP. So to all of the people who were doing, you know, cold outreach and hours and hours and hours of research and market research and finding leads, now we actually have like the best customers or agencies doing outreach for clients. They're buying link bound and they're doing the work that used to take them weeks. They're doing it within a couple minutes. So it's very great for anyone who's selling in the DMs. It's great for agencies. It's great for recruiters, anyone who's basically doing any sort of research to find relevant people to message and sell to on LinkedIn. So it's social selling done within seconds, and it actually matches your offer. And that's, I don't think any other tool does that, where it actually matches the leads list to your offer. So yeah, uh, I built it for myself, basically. We needed that because I've been doing it manually. And then when we just told people about it, hey, warm outreach, warm out, and they're like, Yes, me, you've been telling us about warm outreach for years now, right? And I'm like, Well, here's a tool now. So it's very authentic and it's very relevant to the brand, right? Compared to the example I gave earlier, where it's like it's not something I use as good as it is. So that's the that's the story of how Linkbound came about.
DarrenDude, I would personally love to see that. Even for our like software company. Go to linkbound.io and just it's what I describe is that this is the front end to everything, right? It's the lead generation front end. And like how much hours do we waste going through like quote unquote bad leads? I just mean like unqualified.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
DarrenDude, I could even add more to that, right? Like, so you know, we we build sales teams, like we help people build sales teams, and part of that is teaching their reps how to actually find ICP people. And I can tell you firsthand from working with 12 to 20 people sales teams, people the reps literally don't know who the ICP
Why Linkbound: Warm Leads From Engagement
Darrenis six months into working with them. I'm literally me, man, six months in, and I've seen and even like our own reps, right? Like we have a 12-person sales team. Um, like when they come in, it takes them a while to crack it. So, yeah, dude, I I rate this a lot. I rate this a little bit. There you go.
SPEAKER_02There's there's one part I failed to mention, which is like the way we've kind of positioned, like our positioning has changed as as well. Like the way you position it at the very beginning was um find leads, hidden leads in your LinkedIn engagement. Like that's that was the gist of it, right? It's like as long as you get engagement, as long as you're interacting with people, you can filter that down to find actual warm leads in people you've interacted with a lot. Um, but then the the complaint was for a lot of people who want to sell, and for a lot of people who are great at their work and have really strong and premium offers, they're like, I'm not getting that much engagement on my post, man. It's like, how relevant is the tool for me? And I'm like, you don't have to use your profile. You can plug in any LinkedIn URL in the world. You can analyze your competitors' engagement. So if your competitor from the same exact niche, same exact industry, same exact offer as yours, basically, is getting engagement, analyze their audience because it's the same exact audience, but it's still gonna make it relevant for your offer because at the very beginning, you've trained it on your offer specifically. So no matter where the relevant leads are coming from, they're still getting filtered down based on your offer specifically, right? Because, like in the very first version, the way it was, it's like Darren and I are interacting all the time on LinkedIn. So I would maybe be number one on Darren's leads list. But it's like, I'm not your ICP. Just based off the based off of the relationship score, I'm number one on the list, but I'm not your ICP. So now we've added that further, you know, level of filtering where it's like all of those people who are just friends, buddies, and people who aren't necessarily relevant to your offer and what you have to sell, they're gonna get kicked out of your lists. And the standard filters, you can even filter down even more based on location, you know, company size, things like that. It's the standard LinkedIn filters, literally all of the filters that you have when you're searching for profile. So yeah, it's it's we've thought about it, it's great. It's not a direct competitor to anything. It just plugs in seamless, seamlessly to wherever you want. It's like this, I feel like this is the first step, and then you can plug it into whatever CRM or whatever you want. It's like we don't we don't compete with anyone, really. It's like this is like you said, this is the front of the line. Finding the people, pre-qualifying it, and then you do whatever you want on the sales side. Then you do the DMs. We don't do any automation, no DMing, no nothing.
DarrenSo yeah, dude, that's super, super powerful. That could literally plug so well into like even our platform through Zapier, genuinely, because they need those leads and they need to process those leads, you know. Yep. Um, it's all it's all interconnected.
SPEAKER_01I'll I'll connect you to the team, man. You can you can get a demo, you can try it out for yourself. So I'm happy to do that.
Darren100%, dude. I want to I want to check it out afterwards because this is the crux of business, right? Is that at the end of all of this, you need clients at the end of it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02And this is just like again, my style of coaching and my style of selling, you know, isn't pushy, isn't cold. It's like it's brand first, relationship first, then reach out when there's already familiarity. So that's why the tool exists, you know, because it's basically a representation of me and my entire approach.