this is me in 2022 no job living at my parents house and zero LinkedIn followers and this is me 12 months later featuring involves as I just been named one of the fastest growing entrepreneurs on the platform so how did I do it well in this video I'm going to break down the exact seven step strategy I use to go from zero to 100,000 followers in record time without a team without paid ads and without any previous experience on the platform and to prove it wasn't just luck I've used this exact same strategy with hundreds
of clients to help them grow scale and monetize the personal Brands too let me explain in its most simple form if you want to grow on LinkedIn you first need to do a digital detox and no I don't mean locking your phone away fasting and reading 50 bucks but more about removing what no longer benefits you and what is rubbing you from your potential success by this I mean removing connections on LinkedIn all bosses classmate or colleagues anything that is filling your feet with irrelevant noise and self-comparison that is preventing you from posting consistently I've
literally been there feeling so cringe about posting We all do so I started from zero now there's two ways you can do this one removing connections and unfollow as many people as possible or two start from zero with a brand new account I went with the second option Clean Slate new new start and no old work friends peeping at what I was up to I had no excuse to not post because I feared of being seen trying something new by other people and I had all the reason to get out there and look for the
right people who would fit into my the side Network CEOs Founders and likeminded people I made my dream 100 list a term coin by Russell Bronson the idea is that you list 100 people you'd like to connect with and people who have your ideal people in their networks as well so if you wanted to connect with with someone like Steven bartett or Simon synic for example you try to connect with their marketing staff or co-founders who are more likely to be seeing their connections personally increasing your chances of reaching them in the long term today
100% of my connections are my dream hundred list not just a mix of random people I'd met over the last 8 years but since I started from zero I had to give people a good reason to even look at me or my profile and I had to do it quickly so instead of sending spammy into the DMS 100 times a day saying hi very interested in what you're doing at inside company let's exchange synergies I identify the three main things that would make anyone else notice me you should focus on the 8020 rule where you
prioritize the thing with the highest impact then you optimize for Speed and not Perfection to grow as fast as possible on LinkedIn from zero you only need three things to start first the head shot it needs to be clear and high quality you need to look approachable and have a Sol solid background or at least not too distracting this means no photos from your Spain trip with your friends or an outdated selfie you took on your Android 10 years ago it needs to be a direct representation of who you are but most importantly the person
that you're trying to become so set up your iPhone timer with a clear background and take a bunch of up close photos then drop it into Cana and add a clear background is that simple you can even use tools like seales to create a high quality Prof professional photo too if you can't take professional photos right now secondly your headline I've covered this before so I leave the video somewhere here but here are two headline templates you can use immediately right this second if you have an offer you can say what you do who you
do it for and how you help so for example I help business coaches get more sales through DM now if you don't have an offer you can use on a mission to do cool thing with cool outcome sharing content and in about the thing about your journey so for example on a mission to help entrepreneurs grow their social media sharing content about marketing and Ai and posting about the journey super simple you don't need to over complicate it just use those two templates to start and then you can tweak as you go along before we
move on to the third you need to understand that your profile and headline are the two most visible elements about your profile it's showing in your profile on the Main feed and in your comments so those two need to be great but don't overthink it you can always go back and tweak it like I said and adjust as you go along the third is your banner and this is about to contradict like 99% of LinkedIn advice and even mine but if you want to grow as fast as possible just pick a solid color that matches
your brand and move on look this is the B I had from Z to 20,000 followers and this is the B that I had from 20 to 50,000 followers I still use that one on my Twitter look a dashing profile with cool logos an optimized banner and Graphics isn't going to get you seen at the start the next step I'm about to show you well it's the biggest investment I made but the ROI 10x is for me every single day and no I don't mean cash investment I was an unemployed entrepreneur at the time and
I didn't have too much money to invest but I did have one thing to give time hacking growth on LinkedIn is a pay-to-play game and you have two currencies money and time and I went all in on time investment and allocated to one thing first impressions see in real life and online first impressions are insanely important imagine LinkedIn as the world's largest non-stop business conference you've got CEOs investors industry leaders and potential clients all on the One Roof 247 now with steps one and two you're dressed apart but not many people know you they sure
they know me so how do you make their best first impression one number 500 plus that's the maximum number of connections LinkedIn will show you have and it's the one thing people look at to see where they can trust you one thing that helps is mutual connections there is a massive trust point on LinkedIn and it's a form of social proof for example when you see two videos on the YouTube comp page one of them has your favorite entrepreneurs face and more views and the other one doesn't have either you're more likely to click on
the video that has more views because it's more interesting to you align to your interest and it's validated by the number of views subconsciously you think that the video with more views and familiar faces is better it has credibility well LinkedIn is the same it's one of those undeniable LinkedIn checkboxes too you needed to mark your profile as complete to get 500 plus connections you don't need to rush to Post 100 pieces of content a day but you actually need to rush to comment because they act as conversations and people on LinkedIn love talking about
interesting topics it's kind of one of the purposes of the platform too so here's how to get 500 plus relevant connections and beyond that two using commenting first find 20 to 30 active accounts in your Niche or adjacent ones so if it's business you can look at marketing entrepreneurship and Leadership accounts make sure that there is a range of following from 0 to 5K then 5 to 20K then 20K plus 0 to 5K is usually people in the same boat as you and most likely to reciprocate the interactions 5 to 20K are usually steps ahead
and and they may reciprocate but you get more visibility as more people follow them and they may see your comment and then 20,000 followers plus maybe harder to stand out but if you do you get a double win as there are so many more eyeballs on you just look at this coming with nearly 200 likes this got him like three leads as well by the way so list their name URL and posting time and try to comment as early as possible on their post the earlier you are the most likely people are to know you
trust me I did this for months and what happened was that due to the beautiful nature of reciprocity bias the more you give the more you can take in the end when it comes to actually commenting though here's exactly what you don't do you don't leave great post or 100% ask comments you don't use AI tools to comment and you don't use single emergis ass comments to stand out without looking like a fan or a groupy you need to leave three types of comments a personal take on what the post you're commenting on was about
a motivational mic drop where you share a quote that matches the tone of the post or if you're like me a meme use your humor you can gamify this as well doing commenting Sprint throughout your day that's the easiest way to build a habit and practice your commenting you can use this strategy to comment on people's content in your feed or reply to your own comments on your own post this strategy works it's even being featured by link LED in themselves shout out to my friend Yasmin Alec for creating it to me commenting is the
biggest way to build leverage when you don't have any you're guaranteed thousands of new eyeballs when you do this at least 20 times a day without even posting you build trust connections and friendships just through commenting alone and for all the technical people looking to understand why this is important if you look at the standard marketing funnel you can see that nurture is a key point for long-term success your LinkedIn is the same you nurture your orings from awareness level to consideration and purchase and you retain them by nurturing them to stay and turning them
into not just followers but a true community of people who want to support your mission and today having real conversations is what's making personal Brands win literally no one comments on your post no one likes them and yes it helps to get people into your door but now you need to get them to stay I for example was posting a variety of Life updates marketing Trends memes and fluffy value it wasn't getting me the virality engagement and opportunities I was promised so I did the complete opposite I focused on micro niching down my first Niche
on LinkedIn was marketing good enough but too broad because in that I was competing with SEO influencer marketing smas copywriters and so on my content was scattered then I learned about the single biggest business hack to grow even if you don't have any experience it's the rule of one one problem one solution one thing I spoke about this before when it comes to offer creation but it's insanely important in content creation too so to find the one thing you need find the topic or topics you're best at for me it was personal branding so then
I broke down what pastal branding actually meant to me and overall it was a combination of writing content creation PR and social media strategy I narrow it down to my expertise so I could become a leader in those specific micro niches quickly so then I could climb on lava gaining more Authority more leverage and way more credibility and the more I did it because of the nature of repetition the better I got here's a post from 2 years ago of me getting double and triple likes and here's a post from this week getting over 1,000
likes and over 500 comments this wouldn't have been possible though if I didn't force myself to post content and followed the rule of one the more I posted the more feedback loops I created through data and the better I got and I also learned a ton more through experimentation text post carousels infographics hooks re hooks short post and long post different calls to action everything became a test and to become a top 0.1 Creator you learn you test and you iterate every single day this to me is truly where the magic happens because it feels
like a game find the gap between your interest and the demand and again if you speak to a broad topic like entrepreneurship or business you're competing with everyone gar ve borrow business meme Pages people with 100K followers but if you speak about an insanely Micron Niche thing like conversion on LinkedIn or AI automations for B2B then you're so in you don't need to change your Niche entirely but you do need to Niche down to where your expertise truly lies that needs and I can't emphasize enough to be your main focus with your content don't over
complicated it you don't need more systems you need more focus on your content when in doubt think about the rule of one so just before we move on to the fifth step in this strategy I've created an entirely free course on personal branding and how to grow an online audience fast through writing Link in the description oh and also don't forget to subscribe to this channel so I can keep on providing you with free value and resources like this one now we've hits a light bulb moment but to grow in LinkedIn you need to understand
how high performance content is born and it all comes down to three things educate Inspire and entertain if you look across the board for recent long form and short form content you've liked they all do one of those three things Justin Welsh educates heavily online Mr the Beast entertains to a mass scale and people like David gorgens Inspire if your content isn't doing at least one of them then you won't grow and after studying thousands of accounts in a variety of Industries I noticed that those who do at least two of them win the educational
content brings them in the inspirational content makes them stay and the entertainment element makes them love you but before anyone proposes to you you need to nail the fast two educational and inspirational content for the next 90 days your focus should be posting 3 to five times a week 80% educational content and 20% inspirational content and all of it needs to link back to your pillars we talked about on step five to educate you need to be given tactical advice for example this post breaks down LinkedIn using listicles and examples concisely Post Number Two does
the exact same thing but leveraging carousels and examples to inspire you need to be sharing your story in this post I shared an incredibly personal story about my dad but it linked back to entrepreneurship and how I got started this post takes us through an entire journey in less than 60 seconds and this post breaks up belief and tells us the story immediately the big Nuance here is that it all needs to link back to your main expertise and why the story was relevant so if you're in B2B sales talking about your engagement in what
you learned isn't what you want to be doing although it is a very lengthen thing to do and I am honestly all here for it but if you are in B2B sales and you just got engaged and your new fiance set front row after you practice your speech 20 times in front of her and your post talks about having a life partner who makes the world of a difference in your career then there's potential because it links your personal life and your professional life just don't overdo it with the Emojis okay now being serious a
good tip here is to leverage visual content while doing this good written content is the vehicle but you can also grow quicker by using visual elements this can be in the form of infographics carousels Twitter screenshots or nicely designed graphics and a bonus step to anyone who made it this far into the video if you look at the examples I showed you there is one thing they all have in common visual Rhythm or good text formatting with skim more than we read and creating visual harmony with your writing can improve your chances of getting more
engagement in growing your brand and credibility as it puts emphasis on your ability to explain things in a clear and concise way as a good rule of thumb of Mind always try to make your sentences 8 to 10 words Max use bullet points rather than a dragged out long ass paragraph and always optimized for mobile these personally are the best tools as the market has shift to heavily visual content due to the Tik toic of social media notice how I didn't say video content though but that's an Easter egg for another day or you can
follow me on LinkedIn or X where I'm always dropping updates Trends and my unpopular opinions now the thing that ties this entire strategy together is this final point point and you might have heard the saying if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far go together social media including LinkedIn is rooted in one thing connection it's truly how you stand out from everyone who doesn't care enough people repeat the same cycle of creating content posting and then forgetting to build the one thing that is going to keep on pushing
them up their Network when I started on LinkedIn I had zero connections and I don't mean just literally asking just LinkedIn connections but I knew no one in the industry so to build from the ground up I committed to have as many coffee chats and zoom calls as possible for months and I mean months my calendar was packed with 50-minute coffee chats with people who were just starting out just like me or people two steps in front of me and people two steps behind me and eventually I reached those miles ahead and in fact it's
actually how I met my fast Mentor Richard Mo I connected with someone via their comment section that someone then liked my post and my now Mentor saw the post connected with me on LinkedIn when I had like 1,000 followers I asked for a coffee chat and he accept it and now he's helped me understand how to price my services build my offer close thousands in sales positioning and endless ways to skip the line learning from him if you want to replicate that follow steps 1 to six in this video to attract like-minded people and stand
out give value in every new conversation you have you can offer to help someone out or solve a problem for them become an asset for people build personal leverage slowly your efforts will compound and you will become a magnet you can also collaborate with people or start getting referrals and with time you also make friends in your industry crazy huh over time I got invited to iners events which made connections even more meaningful and this is truly how I built my own luck by showing up every single day now my friends this is exactly how
to grow your audience as fast as possible now if you want to make leads through it I check out this video too I'll see you there
