AI transcript
All right, these are the three types of posts you need
to make money on LinkedIn.
How to do LinkedIn as a side hustler
in the common and costly mistake
you’re probably making on LinkedIn.
This is The Side Hustle Show.
It is the business podcast you can actually apply.
Today’s guest has taken his LinkedIn ghost writing
side hustle from zero to a multi-six figure business
generating millions of impressions along the way.
And he’s here to fill us in
on how to make money on LinkedIn this year
from JoeMcKye.info.
JoeMcKye.
Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
Thanks for having me, Nick.
I’m really looking forward to our chat today.
And me as well.
LinkedIn has long been ignored as a social platform for me.
And after our LinkedIn lesson,
Joe’s got a business idea to donate.
So be sure to stick around for that.
Plus we’ve got the triple threat.
This is Joe’s favorite tool, tactic, and book
from the last 12 months.
But let’s kick it off with those three types of posts
that every LinkedIn side hustler needs to do.
So I try and keep things really, really simple.
Like there is a lot of advice out there.
For me, it is as simple as three types of posts.
The first type of post that I look at
is really about awareness.
So this is usually gonna be a story about you,
about your side hustle,
about where the idea came from,
about why you love what you’re doing,
why you’re passionate about it.
Maybe some of the struggles or the fails
that you’ve had along the way.
And so this kind of a story-based post
is really meant to reach as many people as possible
to drive awareness.
And to get your photo and your headline
and your name in front of as many people as you can.
So I think that’s kind of the starting point,
is going broad and telling a story.
– Okay, we will go into some examples of all of these.
– Yeah, sure. – But go ahead.
– So the second type of post that I think of
is really around educating your target audience.
So we’re starting to get a little bit narrower
in who we’re speaking to here.
You wanna try and demonstrate that you’re the expert
or you’re the person that they should reach out to
when they face the problem that you solve.
So you’re trying to either educate them
around a problem that they might have
and teach your target audience how to solve that problem.
You might unpack how you got a result for a client
or a great client story.
You might share a mental model or a framework
or something that you apply in your side hustle with clients.
And so really that next kind of layer
of your three-layered content strategy
is around building trust and demonstrating your expertise
with a relevant audience.
So it’s less about kind of breadth and volume of eyeballs
and more about focusing in on who you’re talking to
and targeting them more specifically.
– Okay, got it.
– And the third post that you really need to,
and this is where I see a lot of people
leaving money on the table is to make an offer.
So a lot of people assume that by telling some stories
and building some trust that customers will come to them
and that can happen.
But it’s really important to consistently
and regularly remind people exactly what you do,
who you help, how you help them
and then how they can work with you
and kind of make that offer and put that in front of them
with a clear simple call to action that someone can follow.
That might be send me a DM, that might be join my newsletter.
So making that offer, making an offer of some kind
and putting it in front of your target audience
rather than hoping that they kind of come to you
and know what action to take.
– Got it.
So at the end of the post or even it could be
the whole post itself is an offer type of post.
Hey, if you want more of this,
I send out a newsletter every Thursday on this topic.
You know, make sure you join so you never miss one.
Send me a message or book a discovery call,
inviting people to take that next step
to deepen the relationship or do business with you.
– Yeah, absolutely.
So that call to action kind of sits at the end,
whether it’s, yeah, what I think of as like a light lift
call to action, which would be join my newsletter
or follow me through to a really like a heavier lift,
kind of a higher value call to action,
which is, as you said, book a discovery call,
book a strategy call,
depending obviously on your side hustle
and the service you’re offering.
And what goes really well as kind of the content
of those offer-led posts is customer testimonials,
great client results that you’ve received,
you know, where you can demonstrate ROI
of whatever it is that you’re offering.
If you kind of start with that and potentially a story,
you know, a customer story around that
and then have a call to action that follows,
that’s a really powerful combination.
– Okay, so I could put something like,
I could reformat a story from the podcast
and put that on LinkedIn as a text-based post
or maybe with some image,
we can talk about those type of tactics too.
And then the, if you want more stories like this,
make sure to follow the side hustle show,
some framework like that.
– Absolutely.
So, you know, if someone gets to the bottom of your post,
you’ve grabbed their attention,
you’ve obviously piqued their interest,
it’s really important to give them a next step to take
before they just go scrolling by.
– Has LinkedIn gone like more algorithm-based
versus more follower-based
where if you create something, you know,
maybe only have a hundred connections or something like,
I don’t necessarily need those people to see it,
but I would like the broader world to see it.
If I hit that viral thread, just right like,
is that gonna happen?
And do I have the ability to, you know,
go beyond my existing network here?
– Yeah, absolutely.
That shift is coming to the algorithm on LinkedIn.
It’s kind of arrived already.
And I think I’m seeing it getting more exaggerated.
So you are more likely than ever to see yet viral type,
more algorithm-led content
versus content from your direct network.
And I think that can be a good and a bad thing.
– Yeah, as a user, it’s getting bad
because it’s like, you know, Facebook, Instagram,
like they’re serving me up,
all sorts of stuff from accounts pages
that I have never followed, never really interacted with.
But they’re like, well, you watch this one ski video.
So we think you’re gonna like this one too.
And you’re like, well, dang it, you’re right.
Or you looked at this one data map.
I don’t know, I love looking at these.
So, and of course, you spent a long time staring at it.
And so they’re like, oh, this guy’s really engaged
with this stuff.
And so they show you more of that.
And it’s good to back.
You’re like, well, I didn’t ask for that.
You know, you didn’t, I didn’t follow this page,
but, you know, for those content creators,
they’re able to reach a much wider audience
than they otherwise would have.
So I could see the positive side of it too.
– Yeah, it is certainly a mixed bag,
but if you do have a small audience,
it’s still, it’s possible to go viral.
It’s possible to reach, you know, much wider
than your own kind of first degree network.
But for me, I’m still trying to bring it back
to your target audience and who is likely to buy from you.
You know, that’s ultimately who you really want
to get in front of.
The eyeballs can feel good and going viral can feel good,
but really you’re there, especially on a platform
like LinkedIn and for side hustlers,
you are trying to turn that into a commercial opportunity.
So getting in front of the right audience
is the most important thing.
Are you proactively making connection requests
or is it kind of relying on this content first strategy
to grow that network or that follower base on the platform?
– Well, I think you definitely need both.
So I think one of the most powerful aspects of LinkedIn
is this ability to search by industry, by job title,
by company.
So if you’re selling a service or have an offer
that kind of relates to a certain type of worker
or someone who works in a specific industry
or with a certain job title,
it’s a really powerful tool to do that proactive outreach
and build your audience, like take it into your own hands
to build, curate an audience that’s gonna be relevant
to you by sending those connection requests.
Then your content strategy is really what becomes
your shop window, kind of becomes your,
the proof point that you know what you’re talking about
when they look at that connection request from you,
when they see you show up in the feed,
that’s where that kind of trust building comes in
and hopefully you then able to put an offer
in front of a relevant audience later.
So I believe the two really need to sit together.
You need to go out and build your own audience
and then create content to feed that audience
and nurture them.
– Is there a rule of thumb for how many requests
to send on a daily or weekly basis
without hitting some spam and red flags?
– It’s more of a rule of Microsoft than a rule of thumb.
I think you can send 100 connection requests per week.
And I think that doubles if you have LinkedIn Premium.
– Okay.
– If you’re doing it manually,
you’ll just get told that you’ve hit the limit.
There are some automation tools out there
which LinkedIn is aware of
and is cracking down on some of that stuff.
I’ve never used kind of an automation tool
to grow my audience.
You can and they plug in,
but I know that LinkedIn is tightening the screws on those.
– Got it.
Okay.
I want to go back to the top of the funnel,
this awareness type of post.
Can you give us some examples or frameworks
of it’s got to be hook, story.
I’m glad to, there’s a handful tools in your tool belt
that work really well to try and drive this initial awareness.
– Yeah, absolutely.
Look, something that I’m seeing work really well
at the moment, ’cause I think like all social media,
LinkedIn can be a place of overblown positivity.
It feels like everyone’s making seven figures
in their sleep and conquering the world.
And so talking about a challenge that you faced,
talking about a fail that you had or a mistake
that you made along the way in starting a side hustle
or building a side hustle is a really great way to,
people want to see that’s compelling content.
People do want to learn what happened,
but it’s also a way to be authentic and share,
I guess a little bit behind the scenes
and build that trust kind of at the same time.
So I try and use LinkedIn in a really honest way.
There is obviously some polish and some curation
that goes into putting something out in public.
So I guess what I think of is we have a personal life
and we have a private life.
And if you can get close to that line,
so if you can share something from your personal life,
especially like as a side hustle or as a solopreneur,
we are the brand, we are the business.
If you can get close to that line
where you’re kind of almost in your private life
without breach any trust or sharing anything
that you’re not comfortable sharing,
that can be a really rich vein of stories and ideas
and things that you can share
that will resonate with a wider audience.
– Okay, the opening line that I see over and over again,
and you can probably apply this at just about any niche
is like a hundred million people use chat GPT,
but 99% of them are using it wrong
or half of America has a side hustle,
but 99% of the people aren’t doing it right.
And then it kind of goes in,
is this just a factor of people ripping off
what has worked for other people,
like other viral threads or other viral posts
and saying like, well, how can I apply this to my,
I guess that’s one way to reverse engineer it.
– Yeah, look, there certainly are.
And if you spend as much time as I have on LinkedIn
over the last couple of years,
you do start to spot these almost canned templated hooks.
– Yeah.
– The 99%, you know, really specific numbers
and figures in opening hooks are really popular.
So there is a lot of that.
And I think that can, tactics like that can help.
And, you know, there’s any number of creators
you can go and purchase some hook templates
or some post templates from.
But I predict in 2025, we’re gonna see more focus on,
I’m calling it norm core content.
So more your crocs and socks style content,
like content that is genuine, it’s real,
it may not be as polished,
but it’s based on kind of genuine insight, I guess,
is what I’m hoping at least to see take over more this year.
There will always be that tendency
to viral kind of templated style hooks,
but I don’t think it serves you in the long term.
– As somebody who creates a lot of content,
but never finds the time or prioritizes the time
to post on social media or something.
Where it’s like, how can I take this,
this long form podcast interview as one example
and like, you know, crank it through some machine
where it comes out as like a coherent,
you know, LinkedIn formatted type of post.
– So there’s a few.
So I mean, for video repurposing specifically,
you’ve got Opus Pro, which does a really good job
of taking long form content and creating clips.
– Okay.
– I think you’re a descript user.
Descript has started offering that as well.
So vertical video as a format on LinkedIn
is really trending upwards.
LinkedIn has installed a kind of a TikTok style video feed.
So for you, as someone who’s going to have a lot of
video content up your sleeve,
some simple repurposing, some shorts,
that kind of thing could work really well.
In terms of going from a video into like a text-based post,
chat GPT can be really helpful to help you kind of
pull out key stories and moments.
I tend to lean towards moments in a conversation,
like if it’s a podcast, or for me,
if it’s a coaching call with a solopreneur or with a client,
the moments when I’m feeling like I’m leaning
into the conversation and I can tell they’re leaning in
if I’m sharing an example or a framework or a story,
my brain is kind of just, is tracking those moments
when it feels like something important is kind of passing
through the airwaves, if that makes sense.
So I use a lot of tools to help what I do,
but I’m also, at the end of the day,
just trying to use my own antenna
from the conversations I’m having to go,
that felt like a moment or that felt like an anecdote
or a story or a model that would be relevant
would be good to share.
So for me, it’s that combination of tools
and then that human element of just feeling the moment,
I guess, if that’s kind of hard to explain.
– Yeah, and you can look through your own feed
to see what is showing up, what is working
and obviously apply that to your own voice
and to your own niche.
– Absolutely, I think there is an element
of reverse engineering that’s possible
and that’s helpful, see the types of posts
that you resonate with and see what you could apply
from your own history, your own story, your own lessons.
But novel content, I think, is really important as well.
What’s something that only you could write about
or a post that only you could create.
– More LinkedIn tactics with Joe in just a moment,
including what not to include in your posts,
plus the best times to post right after this.
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– As far as the format, this is really helpful.
It’s like, oh, there may be a somewhat of a blue ocean
in short form video on this platform
because this hasn’t historically been
a short form video platform.
And so that’s like, you know, getting more eyeballs.
Anything else, best practices,
as far as images versus text versus video
versus putting a link in the text,
like all these little nitty-gritty tactics?
– Yeah, absolutely.
So LinkedIn really wants to keep people on platform.
So posts that include external links
will get punished by the algorithm.
You know, LinkedIn will try and suppress those to an extent.
So if you include like a YouTube link in your post
or a link to your sign up to your newsletter directly,
that can, that will really harm your reach.
The flip side is you’re gonna get a better conversion rate.
If it’s easy for someone to see your post
and then click out to something.
So that’s sometimes a trade-off
that you might be willing to make.
Adding images to posts certainly helps,
particularly if they are a story-led post.
The classic LinkedIn selfies
is a bit of a thing for a reason.
It does seem to help the algorithm.
– Sorry, what do you mean by that?
– Well, it’s just again,
I’ve spent a lot of time in the big blue box
and you’ll see a lot of creators
who are just adding random selfies to kind of every post.
And it’s a grab for reach and it definitely works.
Just for me, it’s worth that line
of how you wanna present your brand
and what’s relevant to the post or to the story.
But adding a selfie, adding a photo of yourself
will definitely improve the reach of that post.
– Interesting, okay.
– Yeah, what other tips can I share?
So video is absolutely on the rise.
Like I’m really leaning into video for 2025, short form video.
And then your text posts,
I think the key is to avoid slabs of text.
Like paragraphs and paragraphs of text
are just hard to digest.
You use plenty of white space.
Hit the enter button, give it lots of line breaks,
short paragraphs, make it easy on the brain.
And for yourself or for your clients,
any rules regarding why I gotta post three times a day,
I gotta post three times a week,
like what kind of frequency are you finding works best?
– The kind of 80/20 rule
where you’re gonna get 80% of the value
is three times a week.
And for me, I would suggest Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
sometime before most people would start work
in your own local time.
So for me, like I try and schedule posts
to go out at 8.30 a.m. where I am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
That’s a really simple, and again,
if you tie it back to that three posts that we’re looking at,
you could share roughly one of those each week
on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
And that’s a really simple,
manageable, effective content strategy
that’s gonna help you kind of feed the algorithm
the way it needs to be fed,
but also not spend forever creating content for LinkedIn.
– Is there a way to batch, schedule those,
like upload and schedule in advance?
Or do they prefer you like drafting them in platform
and just hitting enter live?
– No, so scheduling is a thing.
So you can absolutely, there’s a little clock icon
when you write a post,
you’ll see a little clock icon next to the post button
and that’s where you can schedule.
So for me, I’m trying to batch at least a week in a time
and get myself a week’s runway in advance.
You can get it done really quick.
– Yeah, the second type of post,
we talked about the awareness post.
These were norm core content.
This could be short form videos.
This could be struggles, fails.
I used to think this, but now I think this.
It could be trying to build awareness for who you are,
what you do kind of thing.
The education piece seems perhaps simpler.
It’s like, well, this is what,
especially if it’s,
if you’re building a business around stuff
you already know and do,
here’s the seven steps to do XYZ.
It could be some results that you’ve gotten
for a previous client.
It could be a tool or tactic that it’s helping you.
Like, I think the education piece is maybe easier
to come up with and like,
oh, what would be a viral idea in this niche?
Like, oh, that’s more intimidating.
But what do you see working on the education side?
– The secret source with this is that the best content,
the most relevant content that’s going to resonate
with your target audience
is not going to be created from scratch.
It’s going to be harvested.
It’s going to be found in the interactions
you’re already having with your customers.
So like I was saying before,
if I’m on a coaching call and I’m sharing a lesson
or a client shares a problem
or a question that they’re facing with me,
that question or that problem
can kind of become the opening hook.
And then my answer, the way I respond to that
or how I help them solve that is the body of the post.
And so I’m always looking at repurposing content,
not across formats or across platforms,
but really across like between delivery,
between sales and between marketing.
I think you can always be repurposing across those.
So you might get onto a discovery call
and the objections that you commonly hear
or the questions you get
before someone decides to purchase from you.
Those can be fantastic ideas for content that builds truck.
Answer those questions in content.
– Now, I really like this Q&A type of creative process
where especially if you’re already going
through the trouble of answering this question,
it’s like, okay, could you make a note
or could you repurpose that to a new platform?
Sure, you’re going to have to reformat it.
You’re going to have to find an image or take a selfie
and figure out how to answer that.
But we had a guest years ago.
We said, this is the single most important document
that I keep on my computer.
It’s my questions database.
It’s the list of questions that people ask me.
And the reason it’s important
is one, it fuels this future content.
But second, it kind of gives you these little hints
and clues as to what your perceived areas of expertise are
where even if you don’t have a side hustle yet,
well, what are people asking you questions about?
That’s something that they think you might have
the answer to.
They probably know more about than the average person,
at least more than the person asking you.
And so I tried to do this for a while,
like in a Google sheet and it was like really tedious.
So I just have, in Facebook,
I have a saved label as questions
and same thing in email, in Gmail,
like I have a label as questions.
So I can drag stuff over there.
I want to get email questions.
And in my case, that turns into Q and A episodes,
but it could just as easily turn into Q and A content
here on LinkedIn, under this education category.
– Yeah, absolutely.
It’s such an important way to think about
harvesting content rather than starting from scratch.
And the hardest thing about creating any content
is that blank page.
And so whatever you can use to get past that
is super valuable.
The other one I would touch on,
this idea of trying to take people onto the workshop,
like give them a tour of the workshop
of what it’s like to work with you
or to engage with your, to receive your service
or your product or your offer.
Kind of showing them behind the scenes,
whatever that might look like.
So it might be a shot of where you record the podcast
or a deliverable that you give to clients
or what the onboarding document might look like.
Things like that, assets, collateral,
stuff that you’ve got lying around your side hustle
that give people a tour of the workshop,
I think really valuable content resources as well.
– Yeah, how the sausage gets made.
You know, my friends in e-commerce do this really well.
Like, “Hey, new shipment just came in.”
Like, “Okay, great.”
Or we don’t have any room in the warehouse.
Like now it’s an excuse to throw a liquidation mini sale
or something.
Our local ski area does this really well.
They’re always like over,
even over the course of the summer,
like it’s not ski season, nobody’s thinking about this.
But they’re showing like,
here’s the improvements that we’re making to our mountain.
Look, we’re, you know, airlifting in new chairlift poles
with a helicopter.
And it’s like, they got some cool drone footage of this.
And you may not have that,
but you might have it on a smaller scale.
So I like this behind the scenes type of content.
I think that could be really cool.
Like building that trust.
Like another touch point to build up that trust.
Now, Joe, the question that comes up
a lot specifically related to LinkedIn is,
“Hey, I’m trying to start a side hustle.”
LinkedIn is like my professional workplace network
for my day job,
where there may not be a lot of overlap between the two
or I may not necessarily want my bot.
Hey, I saw you posting about some random,
like, you know, what’s that all about?
It’s like, how do you tow the line of,
what do I post publicly?
Where do I need to set up a separate profile
for my side hustle?
Like, and I get that this is the kind of a unique situation,
like facing people trying to start something on the side.
– Yeah, a lot of people are in this situation
for various reasons.
They haven’t had the conversation with their employer
or it’s not a possibility to have that conversation.
I think you can still get a lot of value out of LinkedIn
without doing anything above the surface, let’s say.
So I touched on before, you know,
the ability to search by job title, by industry,
by company, the direct message capabilities in LinkedIn
and the people that you can reach
and how focused you can get to a target audience
is really valuable.
So if you’re in that situation
where you’re not necessarily wanting to publicize
what you’re doing, then get into the direct messages.
It’s got good search functionality on LinkedIn.
You don’t need sales navigator.
LinkedIn premium I think is, you know,
about 70 bucks a month or 60 bucks a month.
And with that, you can get some better access
to connect with people.
And you can do a lot of really good work
in building a prospect list and selling just in the DMs.
So the way that I approach that,
or I would suggest people approach that,
is a simple A/B test.
So when you send a connection request on LinkedIn,
you can either send it just as is,
or you can add a short note up to 300 characters
to that request.
And so I would do like a 50/50 split, you know,
send 10 connection requests without a message attached,
send 10 with a simple message that, you know,
talks to the pain point you solve
or what a lot of customers talk to you about
and kind of position your service
and see which of the two kind of gets the best response rate
and then lean into that strategy.
– Got it.
And I imagine if you’re creating content
about your area of expertise at work, then it’s, you know,
okay, I’m building my professional network.
To me, it’s hard to imagine an employer
getting all upset about that.
And maybe where the challenging part comes in,
it’s like, well, I do this for my day job,
but now my LinkedIn profile is like completely out
and left field where I’m like,
hey, it says founder of such and such other,
you know, random company.
And then that’s like where it starts
to maybe look a little bit weird.
And I, you know, can get on my soapbox
and be like, look, your employer doesn’t own you
24 hours a day.
Like, what do they care?
You know, what you’re doing in your spare time.
But like, there’s still that like social norms piece of,
you know, workplace etiquette.
– Yeah, there is.
Look, I was fortunate enough
to just have a really open conversation, you know,
as part of accepting the last day job offer I had
before I went full time into my side hustle
was to have that conversation that, you know,
this is the side hustle that I’ve got.
My LinkedIn channel is a key business tool
for that side hustle.
And that channel, I guess, belongs to me.
And not every employer will be as understanding,
but from my perspective, if you can be proactive
and if you can kind of stay ahead of it
and be proactive with your communication,
you know, have that conversation in advance,
it’s going to be a load off your shoulders, you know,
rather than trying to wonder what your boss might be thinking,
but do as much as you can on the side.
Like if you can find a way to have that conversation,
then I think it’s valuable.
And even if the answer is not what you hope,
you’ll have more information, you’ll be in a position
to then maybe make a more informed decision from there.
– One of the exciting things about this is, yeah,
we’re trying to, you know, cast a wide net
with this awareness type of content.
We’re trying to narrow that funnel down
with this educational type of content.
And then we’re trying to close the deal
with this offer type of content.
And depending on what your offer is,
it may not take that many takers
to build a meaningful side income.
And I don’t know what was in your case,
where it’s like, okay, can we just hire you
to do this for us?
Like as people start raising their hand to say yes,
or for any of your clients,
can you share some of the results that you’ve seen
where people started to build their connections
and all of a sudden that translated into dollars and cents?
– Yeah, absolutely, for myself.
So it started with me just sharing my own thoughts
on LinkedIn regularly and getting a bit of traction
and engagement and just really enjoying that process
to then I remember vividly, my first client was a former boss
who was a partner in a management consultancy firm
and it was $500 for 10 posts.
And we did an interview, I redrafted his profile
and then shared 10 posts with him
and it scaled from there.
Like, and what I actually found was
being in the position of a side hustle.
So I spent 12 months where it was just a side hustle.
It was my evenings, it was my weekends.
I’ve got two young kids.
That meant that I priced the service at a level
that kind of reflected the value of that time to me,
of my free time to myself.
So my entry level package is a four figure investment
per month and that’s done for your content
and it’s kind of, it’s scaled from there.
As you say, it doesn’t take,
depending on the service you offer,
it doesn’t take many prospects
to build a really healthy side hustle
that you can start thinking more seriously about.
That was the case for me.
– Yeah, that’s awesome, congrats on building that.
I like that, I don’t know how you phrased it,
but it was like, I wanna make sure that I’m charging enough
to justify the free time that I’m spending here.
‘Cause my alternative is hanging out with the family
or my alternative is sleeping with young kids
or my alternative is, you know,
doing any number of other hobbies.
And so you gotta make it worthwhile.
And if it is seen as side hustle or extra income,
then it’s take it or leave it.
You know, it is, this is the price.
I wanna circle back to this most common mistake
that you see people make with their profiles
or with their content there.
– Yeah, so the common mistake does relate to the offer.
And that is this idea that we assume that everyone
in our network knows exactly what to do next
if they wanna work with us.
You know, we assume that we’re creating all this content,
we’re sending these messages,
where we’ve updated our profile,
like it’s clear that we’ve got this side hustle,
this business in X, whatever it is,
and that just everyone knows where to find us.
And if they wanted to engage us or learn more,
that they would know exactly what step to take.
And that’s just not the reality.
– And even if it is, like, you know,
it puts a lot of the, you know,
onus on the prospect to take that leap of faith or like,
I don’t know, unless the pain is really,
really strong for them, it’s like, okay,
who is that guy again?
I gotta find their thing and sign up for the discovery call
or whatever the next step is.
But I don’t know, I’m kind of with you there.
You probably have been guilty of this.
You almost have to be reminded of it.
You know, there’s probably some marketing.
Oh, you gotta see the offer seven times
before you take action on it.
But there absolutely is something to this.
– Yeah, and so that’s where this offer post, you know,
making that offer, putting it in front of people regularly.
And it can literally be the same post
that you post once a month that says, here’s what I do.
Here’s the people that typically benefit most
from my services.
Here are some of the results I’ve received.
A book or discovery call or go to this website
if you’d like to learn more, send me a DM.
One thing that’s a really crispy good call to action
to use is send me a DM with info.
Like tell them exactly the message to send you
so that they don’t have to sit there in front
of a blank page again and go, you know,
dear Joe, I’ve been struggling with my business
or, you know, take that out of their hands
and just say, send me a DM with, you know, keyword
and I’ll send you some more information.
And just repeating that process regularly
and not being shy about that
because you’re adding new audience all the time.
People are busy and they’re scrolling through content.
And so putting that offer in front of them
on a consistent basis is going to help you grow your business.
– Okay, is that automated?
Like you see that all the time on Instagram specifically,
like, you know, through many chat or something
like comment, hustle and I’ll send you my, you know
free guide to XYZ.
– You can automate that.
I personally don’t.
I’m trying to just get a prospect to send me a DM
and then I’m handling those myself individually.
But that is another trend that’s going on LinkedIn
at the moment is, yeah, comment keyword
for a free copy of my guide.
Again, commenting is really good for virality,
but I’ve heard rumors that LinkedIn is cracking down
on this kind of behavior as well.
So I would be suggesting DM a keyword to me kind
of below the surface rather than a public comment.
– Yeah, that’s fair because it is obnoxious
to see people with really, really,
but I like, I know how the game is played.
So I could like have some level of appreciation for it,
but at the same time, like, really?
Is this what we’re going to do right now?
Okay, all right, well, that was awesome.
It was a great crash course on LinkedIn.
You got me inspired to kind of spruce up my profile
and maybe make a renewed effort to post anything
over there.
I don’t know, it’s probably been years since I posted,
but we can do that after the call.
More with Joe in just a moment,
including his business idea donation
for side hustle show listeners right after this.
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Let’s move on to round two.
This is donate a business idea.
This is something that you might start if you had more time.
This is something that you wish existed in the world.
This is something, you know, maybe you see an opportunity
you think listeners could run with.
And so with that, I’ll kick it back to you.
– Yeah, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time recently.
Like I would say a lot of people listening in chat GPT
and spend a lot of time at that very surface level,
you know, sending it funny prompts,
asking it random facts and figures,
but more recently have dived deeper
into building custom GPTs.
So you can train chat GPT on your coaching calls
with clients on your previous content,
essentially building a personalized AI tool for yourself.
And I could see a million and one different uses for this.
It might be a custom recipe GPT.
It might be activities to do with the kids
on a rainy weekend like custom GPT.
I think it doesn’t take much expertise
to be a couple of steps ahead
of where your average audience member
or average GPT user is to have a lot of capability
to build something that’s bespoke
to a like a one-to-one kind of custom GPT offer.
And I can just see so many different uses for it.
– Yeah, I had thought there was some sort of character limit
or internal memory.
And this could be just for chat GPT specifically,
where it’s like you can upload 4,000 words of something,
but it’s like, you’re talking about here,
what if we uploaded the last 600 episode transcripts
from the side hustle show?
Like some big body of work or, you know,
here’s a copy of my book, you know,
how would Nick answer these questions?
Like that’s kind of what you’re trying to ultimately build.
So this is kind of a separate tool.
I don’t know, where do you go to start
with something like that?
– Yeah, so you can go,
and this is based on kind of chat GPT
as it exists now in January, 2025.
But you can go into explore GPTs
and then you can hit the, there’s a plus icon
in the top right, I think.
And you do need to have the paid version of chat GPT.
And you can then add attachments to a knowledge base.
You give it a set of master prompts,
basically that it will follow every time,
build, add some attachments in a knowledge base.
And all of a sudden you can create
whatever kind of AI assistant you need.
It’s very powerful technology.
– And then the game plan would be
to sell this to another company?
– Well, potentially I could see,
I could see side hustlers selling this to individuals.
I could see people, yeah, selling it to companies,
people who maybe are trying to streamline some of their,
whether it’s their content creation
or have questions answered,
like an almost build an FAQ library
from existing kind of resources and assets that they’ve got.
I think there’s endless possibilities.
– I do see, I mean, maybe this is how they accomplish that.
Some of like the live chat customer support widgets
on certain websites, you ask them a question
and it used to be, I don’t understand that,
let me connect you with the human.
But more and more recently it’s like,
hey, it looks like you’re asking a question about this.
Here’s, they must have fed in some sort of large language model
like based on the, and it spit out a semi-coherent answer
without connecting to a human.
And so maybe that’s one potential application.
I’m trying to go the next step, like the idea sounds cool,
but like, who would be a customer base?
Like, could you pre-sell a customer versus like,
I’m gonna build this out
’cause you may not even have access to this library of content
or a custom health GPT, you know,
given that it’s New Year’s resolution season,
like, oh, we’re gonna, if you want to optimize for,
you know, glucose, I don’t know,
the anti-inflammatory GPT, right?
Or something and, you know, build in, you know,
upload everything that can be found
about that specific topic.
– Yeah, I think where I’m seeing this is just,
for someone who has some time
and is wanting to build a side hustle,
educating yourself on a tool as powerful as chat GPT
and being able to just be a few steps ahead
of your average person,
I think could be quite easily monetized in a whole bunch of ways.
Like, could just be one-to-one training sessions
for boomer dad at home
who wants to learn what this AI thing is about.
It doesn’t take too long to follow your nose on YouTube
or wherever you can find information to get,
arm yourself with enough knowledge
to create some really interesting stuff
that you could then educate others on,
who are a few steps behind you on the same path.
– Okay, and I’d heard of people using it
almost as a co-founder,
as your business coach,
so your spitballing ideas about.
And it may make sense to provide it with more context
than is available on just like the, you know,
public interface free version.
And so you may need to do this plus icon project-based thing.
Like, here’s my financials,
here’s everything that’s gone on in the business so far.
Here’s my biggest challenges.
Like, you know, what do you recommend type of content?
– Yeah, and so I guess one really specific use case for me
has been take some coaching call transcripts
and some sales or discovery call transcripts,
upload those and build essentially
an ideal customer profile.
So I create like an AI version of my ideal customer.
And I then send it email newsletters that I’ve got in draft.
I share draft LinkedIn content with it.
I position offers to it and say, you know,
get its honest feedback based on everything that it knows,
build that person, like literally build an AI avatar
of who you’re trying to talk to, who you’re trying to target
and then bounce ideas off it and see what it thinks.
– Yeah, respond as if you are, you know,
this target prospect.
What do you think of this sales copy?
Or what do you think of this?
– Well, literally, so even deeper than that,
you actually create and you give them,
I give them names so that I don’t kind of lose track.
But my kind of ideal customer profile is called Sarah.
And so she, like she is that persona.
So she’s got kind of that revenue detail.
She’s heard my coaching calls.
Like she’s built a profile of my ideal audience.
And then I send stuff to her.
– Does she give you coherent responses?
Does she give you helpful responses?
Or is like, I’m just talking with a robot here.
– Yeah, no, if you spend the time,
and there’s kind of a process guide that I’ve outlined
to feed it the right prompts to prepare it.
And the key is to get that knowledge base
and that master prompt right.
And if you do that, the results have really surprised me.
I think the one thing I would say is large language models
have essentially just absorbed everything on the internet.
And they really respond to you by kind of predicting
what words generally follow other words in a sequence.
So they’re not as much as it can feel like
they’re thinking critically and logically at the moment
as of whenever this podcast goes out.
They’re not actually thinking.
They’re just playing back kind of,
they’re playing a guessing game really
of what words logically feed in a sequence.
But it’s very useful.
– Okay, and so you can, instead of having consumed
the entire archive of the internet,
you want to feed it very specific information
to become an expert in your business
or in one specific area.
– No.
– All right, I’ve got a lot to,
we need to do another like AI roundup episode.
It’s probably been a couple of years.
It’s like, I know so much has changed
and there’s a lot more that I could be doing in that space
to work smarter, not harder,
even if it’s just with repurposing help
or all sorts of strategy, other next step, step.
But that’s fascinating, custom GPT creation,
Joe’s business idea donation for you.
Let’s move on to round three, which is our triple threat.
And we’re gonna start off with a marketing tactic
that’s working right now.
Could be LinkedIn related, could be something else.
– Yeah, so the tactic that’s working for me right now,
we talked a lot about creating what I think of
as broadcast content, publishing a LinkedIn post,
sending an email and newsletter,
publishing a podcast episode, so one to many.
Something that’s working really well for me,
if we think about, I guess the line of work that I’m in,
which is sort of high ticket consultancy, I guess,
and coaching, sales are gonna happen
in one-to-one conversations.
It’s highly unlikely that a broadcast piece of content
is gonna directly convert into a sale.
So my goal is to get into one-to-one conversations
with people that may wanna buy from me.
And so what I’m doing now is,
whether it’s an email newsletter or a LinkedIn post
that goes out, I’m grabbing it and I’m trying to find
three to five people, I guess, somewhere in my CRM,
in my funnel, I guess I would use the term prospects,
and sending that piece of content to them one-to-one.
And so it’s a simple message like,
hey, Nick, I wrote this post about
the three types of content you need
to build your side hustle, and I thought of you.
And sending that kind of one-on-one to a small handful
of people in my orbit has really rapidly increased
the number of conversations I’m having
with relevant people, ’cause you’re giving a gift.
– Okay, even if they may already be on your email list,
even if they may already have it in their inbox,
like just one extra follow-up to be like,
hey, just want to make sure you saw this,
or hey, I thought of you when I wrote this or something.
– Yeah, you lead with some value, you give a small gift,
and it sparks conversations more often than not.
And so that’s, and again, this idea of trying
to harvest content ideas, never stare at a blank page,
like use the stuff that you’ve already produced,
and then get the most mileage out of it
that you possibly can.
– Anything that you’re using, I don’t know if your CRM
has contact scoring or any criteria,
’cause if you have a list of thousands of people,
like how are you picking who to send this to?
– Yeah, look, my CRM is a very simple spreadsheet.
I have kind of a last contact date
and like a rough nurture date,
and I’m trying to keep those a few weeks apart.
So I’m just sorting by who’s kind of due
or overdue for a nurture,
and then thinking about the content I’ve created recently
and trying to line those two things up.
– Okay, all right, just trying to stay top of mind
and share some goodwill.
– Absolutely.
All right, sales happen one to one.
How are you cultivating those one-on-one relationships,
inviting people to do business with you,
love that tactic?
The next segment here is a new or new to you tool
that you’re loving right now.
We talked chat GPT, we talked a few other tools,
but anything that comes to mind here.
– Yeah, so this is a little bit maybe in the reverse
of the idea of the segment,
but I actually removed the mail app from my iPhone
over the holidays, and it has been a game changer.
So I turned off notifications for mail or email,
and I actually found that was weirdly
making me spend more time in email
’cause I was always refreshing
to see if anything had come in.
And so I just made the switch over just before Christmas,
removed the mail app from my phone,
and so email is now confined to a batch period of time,
like maybe once in the morning, once in the afternoon,
each day on my computer, and that’s it.
And I’ve just found my head space massively open up.
I’m not half wondering in my phone
if this could I have a quick look and check.
I’m just, it’s really helped me compartmentalize
my evenings and my time off.
– Yeah, that makes sense.
And it sounds like it was email in your case,
but it might be TikTok and somebody else’s,
it might be Instagram, whatever is that thing that,
I’m just going in for a quick check,
and then 15 minutes later,
you’re completely derailed and distracted,
and you’re, especially if you’ve got kids,
they see you staring at your phone all the time,
like it’s not great.
So what is that app that needs to get deleted?
You know, maybe go cold turkey, see how much you miss it.
And you know, I imagine there’s some withdrawal symptoms
early on and hopefully you get over that,
but that’s a really interesting one.
I don’t know if anyone has shared that, so I like that.
And your favorite book from the last 12 months.
– Yeah, so this is one that’s still on the bedside table.
It’s not quite finished,
but I’ve taken a lot out of it already.
His “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Godara,
who was the owner, or sorry, not the owner,
but the manager of 11 square, 11 Madison Park in New York.
So one of the best restaurants in the world.
And he shares all his insights
on how he built a world leading team,
but really how he thinks about serving customers
and being hospitable.
And so I did some really interesting client gifting
at the end of 2024, just using this idea,
like the thinking of unreasonable hospitality,
like what is a crazy nice thing I could do for my clients?
Well, so I made a donation to a charity
that I’m passionate about called Just Digit on their behalf
and sent everyone a personalized video note.
You know, I don’t have thousands or hundreds of customers,
but just spending that time to say hi
and completely personalize one-to-one tailored to them.
And the response I got was really uplifting for me as well.
It was a massive win-win.
And so that book has just taught me to think,
and for us, like if it’s a side hustle
or a solopener business, like we can do that stuff.
You know, we are building personal connections
with the people that we’re serving.
And so leaning into that
is really powerful on both sides, I reckon.
– “Unreasonable Hospitality” was the book recommendation.
That is a new title to me.
So we’ll have to check that one out.
We’ll link it up in the show notes
along with all the other resources mentioned in this episode,
including Joe’s newsletters called The Thought Follower.
You can find it at joemacai.info, m-c-k-a-y.info.
Follow along for more LinkedIn tips,
other solopreneur strategies.
I think you’re gonna like it.
We’ll link that up.
And Joe, thanks so much for joining me.
There’s been awesome.
I’m taking a ton of notes on LinkedIn and everything else
and I appreciate your recommendations on what is working here
this year.
Now, if you’re new to the show, welcome.
Thank you for tuning in.
We’ve got hundreds.
You know, if you’re just starting here,
you got hundreds of episodes in the back catalog
to help you make more money.
And if you’re wondering where to start,
I wanna invite you to build your own personalized playlist.
All you gotta do is go to hustle.show.
How it works is you answer a few short,
multiple choice questions.
You tell me a little bit about your side hustle interests,
your goals, where you’re at, where you wanna go.
And the machine is gonna recommend
eight to 10 personalized episodes for you.
And this is a newly updated list for this year.
So again, that’s hustle.show
to get that custom curated playlist.
Big thanks to Joe for sharing his insight.
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That’s it for me.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
If you’re finding value in the show,
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And until next time, let’s go out there
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I’ll catch you in the next edition
of the Side Hustle Show.
to make money on LinkedIn.
How to do LinkedIn as a side hustler
in the common and costly mistake
you’re probably making on LinkedIn.
This is The Side Hustle Show.
It is the business podcast you can actually apply.
Today’s guest has taken his LinkedIn ghost writing
side hustle from zero to a multi-six figure business
generating millions of impressions along the way.
And he’s here to fill us in
on how to make money on LinkedIn this year
from JoeMcKye.info.
JoeMcKye.
Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
Thanks for having me, Nick.
I’m really looking forward to our chat today.
And me as well.
LinkedIn has long been ignored as a social platform for me.
And after our LinkedIn lesson,
Joe’s got a business idea to donate.
So be sure to stick around for that.
Plus we’ve got the triple threat.
This is Joe’s favorite tool, tactic, and book
from the last 12 months.
But let’s kick it off with those three types of posts
that every LinkedIn side hustler needs to do.
So I try and keep things really, really simple.
Like there is a lot of advice out there.
For me, it is as simple as three types of posts.
The first type of post that I look at
is really about awareness.
So this is usually gonna be a story about you,
about your side hustle,
about where the idea came from,
about why you love what you’re doing,
why you’re passionate about it.
Maybe some of the struggles or the fails
that you’ve had along the way.
And so this kind of a story-based post
is really meant to reach as many people as possible
to drive awareness.
And to get your photo and your headline
and your name in front of as many people as you can.
So I think that’s kind of the starting point,
is going broad and telling a story.
– Okay, we will go into some examples of all of these.
– Yeah, sure. – But go ahead.
– So the second type of post that I think of
is really around educating your target audience.
So we’re starting to get a little bit narrower
in who we’re speaking to here.
You wanna try and demonstrate that you’re the expert
or you’re the person that they should reach out to
when they face the problem that you solve.
So you’re trying to either educate them
around a problem that they might have
and teach your target audience how to solve that problem.
You might unpack how you got a result for a client
or a great client story.
You might share a mental model or a framework
or something that you apply in your side hustle with clients.
And so really that next kind of layer
of your three-layered content strategy
is around building trust and demonstrating your expertise
with a relevant audience.
So it’s less about kind of breadth and volume of eyeballs
and more about focusing in on who you’re talking to
and targeting them more specifically.
– Okay, got it.
– And the third post that you really need to,
and this is where I see a lot of people
leaving money on the table is to make an offer.
So a lot of people assume that by telling some stories
and building some trust that customers will come to them
and that can happen.
But it’s really important to consistently
and regularly remind people exactly what you do,
who you help, how you help them
and then how they can work with you
and kind of make that offer and put that in front of them
with a clear simple call to action that someone can follow.
That might be send me a DM, that might be join my newsletter.
So making that offer, making an offer of some kind
and putting it in front of your target audience
rather than hoping that they kind of come to you
and know what action to take.
– Got it.
So at the end of the post or even it could be
the whole post itself is an offer type of post.
Hey, if you want more of this,
I send out a newsletter every Thursday on this topic.
You know, make sure you join so you never miss one.
Send me a message or book a discovery call,
inviting people to take that next step
to deepen the relationship or do business with you.
– Yeah, absolutely.
So that call to action kind of sits at the end,
whether it’s, yeah, what I think of as like a light lift
call to action, which would be join my newsletter
or follow me through to a really like a heavier lift,
kind of a higher value call to action,
which is, as you said, book a discovery call,
book a strategy call,
depending obviously on your side hustle
and the service you’re offering.
And what goes really well as kind of the content
of those offer-led posts is customer testimonials,
great client results that you’ve received,
you know, where you can demonstrate ROI
of whatever it is that you’re offering.
If you kind of start with that and potentially a story,
you know, a customer story around that
and then have a call to action that follows,
that’s a really powerful combination.
– Okay, so I could put something like,
I could reformat a story from the podcast
and put that on LinkedIn as a text-based post
or maybe with some image,
we can talk about those type of tactics too.
And then the, if you want more stories like this,
make sure to follow the side hustle show,
some framework like that.
– Absolutely.
So, you know, if someone gets to the bottom of your post,
you’ve grabbed their attention,
you’ve obviously piqued their interest,
it’s really important to give them a next step to take
before they just go scrolling by.
– Has LinkedIn gone like more algorithm-based
versus more follower-based
where if you create something, you know,
maybe only have a hundred connections or something like,
I don’t necessarily need those people to see it,
but I would like the broader world to see it.
If I hit that viral thread, just right like,
is that gonna happen?
And do I have the ability to, you know,
go beyond my existing network here?
– Yeah, absolutely.
That shift is coming to the algorithm on LinkedIn.
It’s kind of arrived already.
And I think I’m seeing it getting more exaggerated.
So you are more likely than ever to see yet viral type,
more algorithm-led content
versus content from your direct network.
And I think that can be a good and a bad thing.
– Yeah, as a user, it’s getting bad
because it’s like, you know, Facebook, Instagram,
like they’re serving me up,
all sorts of stuff from accounts pages
that I have never followed, never really interacted with.
But they’re like, well, you watch this one ski video.
So we think you’re gonna like this one too.
And you’re like, well, dang it, you’re right.
Or you looked at this one data map.
I don’t know, I love looking at these.
So, and of course, you spent a long time staring at it.
And so they’re like, oh, this guy’s really engaged
with this stuff.
And so they show you more of that.
And it’s good to back.
You’re like, well, I didn’t ask for that.
You know, you didn’t, I didn’t follow this page,
but, you know, for those content creators,
they’re able to reach a much wider audience
than they otherwise would have.
So I could see the positive side of it too.
– Yeah, it is certainly a mixed bag,
but if you do have a small audience,
it’s still, it’s possible to go viral.
It’s possible to reach, you know, much wider
than your own kind of first degree network.
But for me, I’m still trying to bring it back
to your target audience and who is likely to buy from you.
You know, that’s ultimately who you really want
to get in front of.
The eyeballs can feel good and going viral can feel good,
but really you’re there, especially on a platform
like LinkedIn and for side hustlers,
you are trying to turn that into a commercial opportunity.
So getting in front of the right audience
is the most important thing.
Are you proactively making connection requests
or is it kind of relying on this content first strategy
to grow that network or that follower base on the platform?
– Well, I think you definitely need both.
So I think one of the most powerful aspects of LinkedIn
is this ability to search by industry, by job title,
by company.
So if you’re selling a service or have an offer
that kind of relates to a certain type of worker
or someone who works in a specific industry
or with a certain job title,
it’s a really powerful tool to do that proactive outreach
and build your audience, like take it into your own hands
to build, curate an audience that’s gonna be relevant
to you by sending those connection requests.
Then your content strategy is really what becomes
your shop window, kind of becomes your,
the proof point that you know what you’re talking about
when they look at that connection request from you,
when they see you show up in the feed,
that’s where that kind of trust building comes in
and hopefully you then able to put an offer
in front of a relevant audience later.
So I believe the two really need to sit together.
You need to go out and build your own audience
and then create content to feed that audience
and nurture them.
– Is there a rule of thumb for how many requests
to send on a daily or weekly basis
without hitting some spam and red flags?
– It’s more of a rule of Microsoft than a rule of thumb.
I think you can send 100 connection requests per week.
And I think that doubles if you have LinkedIn Premium.
– Okay.
– If you’re doing it manually,
you’ll just get told that you’ve hit the limit.
There are some automation tools out there
which LinkedIn is aware of
and is cracking down on some of that stuff.
I’ve never used kind of an automation tool
to grow my audience.
You can and they plug in,
but I know that LinkedIn is tightening the screws on those.
– Got it.
Okay.
I want to go back to the top of the funnel,
this awareness type of post.
Can you give us some examples or frameworks
of it’s got to be hook, story.
I’m glad to, there’s a handful tools in your tool belt
that work really well to try and drive this initial awareness.
– Yeah, absolutely.
Look, something that I’m seeing work really well
at the moment, ’cause I think like all social media,
LinkedIn can be a place of overblown positivity.
It feels like everyone’s making seven figures
in their sleep and conquering the world.
And so talking about a challenge that you faced,
talking about a fail that you had or a mistake
that you made along the way in starting a side hustle
or building a side hustle is a really great way to,
people want to see that’s compelling content.
People do want to learn what happened,
but it’s also a way to be authentic and share,
I guess a little bit behind the scenes
and build that trust kind of at the same time.
So I try and use LinkedIn in a really honest way.
There is obviously some polish and some curation
that goes into putting something out in public.
So I guess what I think of is we have a personal life
and we have a private life.
And if you can get close to that line,
so if you can share something from your personal life,
especially like as a side hustle or as a solopreneur,
we are the brand, we are the business.
If you can get close to that line
where you’re kind of almost in your private life
without breach any trust or sharing anything
that you’re not comfortable sharing,
that can be a really rich vein of stories and ideas
and things that you can share
that will resonate with a wider audience.
– Okay, the opening line that I see over and over again,
and you can probably apply this at just about any niche
is like a hundred million people use chat GPT,
but 99% of them are using it wrong
or half of America has a side hustle,
but 99% of the people aren’t doing it right.
And then it kind of goes in,
is this just a factor of people ripping off
what has worked for other people,
like other viral threads or other viral posts
and saying like, well, how can I apply this to my,
I guess that’s one way to reverse engineer it.
– Yeah, look, there certainly are.
And if you spend as much time as I have on LinkedIn
over the last couple of years,
you do start to spot these almost canned templated hooks.
– Yeah.
– The 99%, you know, really specific numbers
and figures in opening hooks are really popular.
So there is a lot of that.
And I think that can, tactics like that can help.
And, you know, there’s any number of creators
you can go and purchase some hook templates
or some post templates from.
But I predict in 2025, we’re gonna see more focus on,
I’m calling it norm core content.
So more your crocs and socks style content,
like content that is genuine, it’s real,
it may not be as polished,
but it’s based on kind of genuine insight, I guess,
is what I’m hoping at least to see take over more this year.
There will always be that tendency
to viral kind of templated style hooks,
but I don’t think it serves you in the long term.
– As somebody who creates a lot of content,
but never finds the time or prioritizes the time
to post on social media or something.
Where it’s like, how can I take this,
this long form podcast interview as one example
and like, you know, crank it through some machine
where it comes out as like a coherent,
you know, LinkedIn formatted type of post.
– So there’s a few.
So I mean, for video repurposing specifically,
you’ve got Opus Pro, which does a really good job
of taking long form content and creating clips.
– Okay.
– I think you’re a descript user.
Descript has started offering that as well.
So vertical video as a format on LinkedIn
is really trending upwards.
LinkedIn has installed a kind of a TikTok style video feed.
So for you, as someone who’s going to have a lot of
video content up your sleeve,
some simple repurposing, some shorts,
that kind of thing could work really well.
In terms of going from a video into like a text-based post,
chat GPT can be really helpful to help you kind of
pull out key stories and moments.
I tend to lean towards moments in a conversation,
like if it’s a podcast, or for me,
if it’s a coaching call with a solopreneur or with a client,
the moments when I’m feeling like I’m leaning
into the conversation and I can tell they’re leaning in
if I’m sharing an example or a framework or a story,
my brain is kind of just, is tracking those moments
when it feels like something important is kind of passing
through the airwaves, if that makes sense.
So I use a lot of tools to help what I do,
but I’m also, at the end of the day,
just trying to use my own antenna
from the conversations I’m having to go,
that felt like a moment or that felt like an anecdote
or a story or a model that would be relevant
would be good to share.
So for me, it’s that combination of tools
and then that human element of just feeling the moment,
I guess, if that’s kind of hard to explain.
– Yeah, and you can look through your own feed
to see what is showing up, what is working
and obviously apply that to your own voice
and to your own niche.
– Absolutely, I think there is an element
of reverse engineering that’s possible
and that’s helpful, see the types of posts
that you resonate with and see what you could apply
from your own history, your own story, your own lessons.
But novel content, I think, is really important as well.
What’s something that only you could write about
or a post that only you could create.
– More LinkedIn tactics with Joe in just a moment,
including what not to include in your posts,
plus the best times to post right after this.
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– As far as the format, this is really helpful.
It’s like, oh, there may be a somewhat of a blue ocean
in short form video on this platform
because this hasn’t historically been
a short form video platform.
And so that’s like, you know, getting more eyeballs.
Anything else, best practices,
as far as images versus text versus video
versus putting a link in the text,
like all these little nitty-gritty tactics?
– Yeah, absolutely.
So LinkedIn really wants to keep people on platform.
So posts that include external links
will get punished by the algorithm.
You know, LinkedIn will try and suppress those to an extent.
So if you include like a YouTube link in your post
or a link to your sign up to your newsletter directly,
that can, that will really harm your reach.
The flip side is you’re gonna get a better conversion rate.
If it’s easy for someone to see your post
and then click out to something.
So that’s sometimes a trade-off
that you might be willing to make.
Adding images to posts certainly helps,
particularly if they are a story-led post.
The classic LinkedIn selfies
is a bit of a thing for a reason.
It does seem to help the algorithm.
– Sorry, what do you mean by that?
– Well, it’s just again,
I’ve spent a lot of time in the big blue box
and you’ll see a lot of creators
who are just adding random selfies to kind of every post.
And it’s a grab for reach and it definitely works.
Just for me, it’s worth that line
of how you wanna present your brand
and what’s relevant to the post or to the story.
But adding a selfie, adding a photo of yourself
will definitely improve the reach of that post.
– Interesting, okay.
– Yeah, what other tips can I share?
So video is absolutely on the rise.
Like I’m really leaning into video for 2025, short form video.
And then your text posts,
I think the key is to avoid slabs of text.
Like paragraphs and paragraphs of text
are just hard to digest.
You use plenty of white space.
Hit the enter button, give it lots of line breaks,
short paragraphs, make it easy on the brain.
And for yourself or for your clients,
any rules regarding why I gotta post three times a day,
I gotta post three times a week,
like what kind of frequency are you finding works best?
– The kind of 80/20 rule
where you’re gonna get 80% of the value
is three times a week.
And for me, I would suggest Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
sometime before most people would start work
in your own local time.
So for me, like I try and schedule posts
to go out at 8.30 a.m. where I am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
That’s a really simple, and again,
if you tie it back to that three posts that we’re looking at,
you could share roughly one of those each week
on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
And that’s a really simple,
manageable, effective content strategy
that’s gonna help you kind of feed the algorithm
the way it needs to be fed,
but also not spend forever creating content for LinkedIn.
– Is there a way to batch, schedule those,
like upload and schedule in advance?
Or do they prefer you like drafting them in platform
and just hitting enter live?
– No, so scheduling is a thing.
So you can absolutely, there’s a little clock icon
when you write a post,
you’ll see a little clock icon next to the post button
and that’s where you can schedule.
So for me, I’m trying to batch at least a week in a time
and get myself a week’s runway in advance.
You can get it done really quick.
– Yeah, the second type of post,
we talked about the awareness post.
These were norm core content.
This could be short form videos.
This could be struggles, fails.
I used to think this, but now I think this.
It could be trying to build awareness for who you are,
what you do kind of thing.
The education piece seems perhaps simpler.
It’s like, well, this is what,
especially if it’s,
if you’re building a business around stuff
you already know and do,
here’s the seven steps to do XYZ.
It could be some results that you’ve gotten
for a previous client.
It could be a tool or tactic that it’s helping you.
Like, I think the education piece is maybe easier
to come up with and like,
oh, what would be a viral idea in this niche?
Like, oh, that’s more intimidating.
But what do you see working on the education side?
– The secret source with this is that the best content,
the most relevant content that’s going to resonate
with your target audience
is not going to be created from scratch.
It’s going to be harvested.
It’s going to be found in the interactions
you’re already having with your customers.
So like I was saying before,
if I’m on a coaching call and I’m sharing a lesson
or a client shares a problem
or a question that they’re facing with me,
that question or that problem
can kind of become the opening hook.
And then my answer, the way I respond to that
or how I help them solve that is the body of the post.
And so I’m always looking at repurposing content,
not across formats or across platforms,
but really across like between delivery,
between sales and between marketing.
I think you can always be repurposing across those.
So you might get onto a discovery call
and the objections that you commonly hear
or the questions you get
before someone decides to purchase from you.
Those can be fantastic ideas for content that builds truck.
Answer those questions in content.
– Now, I really like this Q&A type of creative process
where especially if you’re already going
through the trouble of answering this question,
it’s like, okay, could you make a note
or could you repurpose that to a new platform?
Sure, you’re going to have to reformat it.
You’re going to have to find an image or take a selfie
and figure out how to answer that.
But we had a guest years ago.
We said, this is the single most important document
that I keep on my computer.
It’s my questions database.
It’s the list of questions that people ask me.
And the reason it’s important
is one, it fuels this future content.
But second, it kind of gives you these little hints
and clues as to what your perceived areas of expertise are
where even if you don’t have a side hustle yet,
well, what are people asking you questions about?
That’s something that they think you might have
the answer to.
They probably know more about than the average person,
at least more than the person asking you.
And so I tried to do this for a while,
like in a Google sheet and it was like really tedious.
So I just have, in Facebook,
I have a saved label as questions
and same thing in email, in Gmail,
like I have a label as questions.
So I can drag stuff over there.
I want to get email questions.
And in my case, that turns into Q and A episodes,
but it could just as easily turn into Q and A content
here on LinkedIn, under this education category.
– Yeah, absolutely.
It’s such an important way to think about
harvesting content rather than starting from scratch.
And the hardest thing about creating any content
is that blank page.
And so whatever you can use to get past that
is super valuable.
The other one I would touch on,
this idea of trying to take people onto the workshop,
like give them a tour of the workshop
of what it’s like to work with you
or to engage with your, to receive your service
or your product or your offer.
Kind of showing them behind the scenes,
whatever that might look like.
So it might be a shot of where you record the podcast
or a deliverable that you give to clients
or what the onboarding document might look like.
Things like that, assets, collateral,
stuff that you’ve got lying around your side hustle
that give people a tour of the workshop,
I think really valuable content resources as well.
– Yeah, how the sausage gets made.
You know, my friends in e-commerce do this really well.
Like, “Hey, new shipment just came in.”
Like, “Okay, great.”
Or we don’t have any room in the warehouse.
Like now it’s an excuse to throw a liquidation mini sale
or something.
Our local ski area does this really well.
They’re always like over,
even over the course of the summer,
like it’s not ski season, nobody’s thinking about this.
But they’re showing like,
here’s the improvements that we’re making to our mountain.
Look, we’re, you know, airlifting in new chairlift poles
with a helicopter.
And it’s like, they got some cool drone footage of this.
And you may not have that,
but you might have it on a smaller scale.
So I like this behind the scenes type of content.
I think that could be really cool.
Like building that trust.
Like another touch point to build up that trust.
Now, Joe, the question that comes up
a lot specifically related to LinkedIn is,
“Hey, I’m trying to start a side hustle.”
LinkedIn is like my professional workplace network
for my day job,
where there may not be a lot of overlap between the two
or I may not necessarily want my bot.
Hey, I saw you posting about some random,
like, you know, what’s that all about?
It’s like, how do you tow the line of,
what do I post publicly?
Where do I need to set up a separate profile
for my side hustle?
Like, and I get that this is the kind of a unique situation,
like facing people trying to start something on the side.
– Yeah, a lot of people are in this situation
for various reasons.
They haven’t had the conversation with their employer
or it’s not a possibility to have that conversation.
I think you can still get a lot of value out of LinkedIn
without doing anything above the surface, let’s say.
So I touched on before, you know,
the ability to search by job title, by industry,
by company, the direct message capabilities in LinkedIn
and the people that you can reach
and how focused you can get to a target audience
is really valuable.
So if you’re in that situation
where you’re not necessarily wanting to publicize
what you’re doing, then get into the direct messages.
It’s got good search functionality on LinkedIn.
You don’t need sales navigator.
LinkedIn premium I think is, you know,
about 70 bucks a month or 60 bucks a month.
And with that, you can get some better access
to connect with people.
And you can do a lot of really good work
in building a prospect list and selling just in the DMs.
So the way that I approach that,
or I would suggest people approach that,
is a simple A/B test.
So when you send a connection request on LinkedIn,
you can either send it just as is,
or you can add a short note up to 300 characters
to that request.
And so I would do like a 50/50 split, you know,
send 10 connection requests without a message attached,
send 10 with a simple message that, you know,
talks to the pain point you solve
or what a lot of customers talk to you about
and kind of position your service
and see which of the two kind of gets the best response rate
and then lean into that strategy.
– Got it.
And I imagine if you’re creating content
about your area of expertise at work, then it’s, you know,
okay, I’m building my professional network.
To me, it’s hard to imagine an employer
getting all upset about that.
And maybe where the challenging part comes in,
it’s like, well, I do this for my day job,
but now my LinkedIn profile is like completely out
and left field where I’m like,
hey, it says founder of such and such other,
you know, random company.
And then that’s like where it starts
to maybe look a little bit weird.
And I, you know, can get on my soapbox
and be like, look, your employer doesn’t own you
24 hours a day.
Like, what do they care?
You know, what you’re doing in your spare time.
But like, there’s still that like social norms piece of,
you know, workplace etiquette.
– Yeah, there is.
Look, I was fortunate enough
to just have a really open conversation, you know,
as part of accepting the last day job offer I had
before I went full time into my side hustle
was to have that conversation that, you know,
this is the side hustle that I’ve got.
My LinkedIn channel is a key business tool
for that side hustle.
And that channel, I guess, belongs to me.
And not every employer will be as understanding,
but from my perspective, if you can be proactive
and if you can kind of stay ahead of it
and be proactive with your communication,
you know, have that conversation in advance,
it’s going to be a load off your shoulders, you know,
rather than trying to wonder what your boss might be thinking,
but do as much as you can on the side.
Like if you can find a way to have that conversation,
then I think it’s valuable.
And even if the answer is not what you hope,
you’ll have more information, you’ll be in a position
to then maybe make a more informed decision from there.
– One of the exciting things about this is, yeah,
we’re trying to, you know, cast a wide net
with this awareness type of content.
We’re trying to narrow that funnel down
with this educational type of content.
And then we’re trying to close the deal
with this offer type of content.
And depending on what your offer is,
it may not take that many takers
to build a meaningful side income.
And I don’t know what was in your case,
where it’s like, okay, can we just hire you
to do this for us?
Like as people start raising their hand to say yes,
or for any of your clients,
can you share some of the results that you’ve seen
where people started to build their connections
and all of a sudden that translated into dollars and cents?
– Yeah, absolutely, for myself.
So it started with me just sharing my own thoughts
on LinkedIn regularly and getting a bit of traction
and engagement and just really enjoying that process
to then I remember vividly, my first client was a former boss
who was a partner in a management consultancy firm
and it was $500 for 10 posts.
And we did an interview, I redrafted his profile
and then shared 10 posts with him
and it scaled from there.
Like, and what I actually found was
being in the position of a side hustle.
So I spent 12 months where it was just a side hustle.
It was my evenings, it was my weekends.
I’ve got two young kids.
That meant that I priced the service at a level
that kind of reflected the value of that time to me,
of my free time to myself.
So my entry level package is a four figure investment
per month and that’s done for your content
and it’s kind of, it’s scaled from there.
As you say, it doesn’t take,
depending on the service you offer,
it doesn’t take many prospects
to build a really healthy side hustle
that you can start thinking more seriously about.
That was the case for me.
– Yeah, that’s awesome, congrats on building that.
I like that, I don’t know how you phrased it,
but it was like, I wanna make sure that I’m charging enough
to justify the free time that I’m spending here.
‘Cause my alternative is hanging out with the family
or my alternative is sleeping with young kids
or my alternative is, you know,
doing any number of other hobbies.
And so you gotta make it worthwhile.
And if it is seen as side hustle or extra income,
then it’s take it or leave it.
You know, it is, this is the price.
I wanna circle back to this most common mistake
that you see people make with their profiles
or with their content there.
– Yeah, so the common mistake does relate to the offer.
And that is this idea that we assume that everyone
in our network knows exactly what to do next
if they wanna work with us.
You know, we assume that we’re creating all this content,
we’re sending these messages,
where we’ve updated our profile,
like it’s clear that we’ve got this side hustle,
this business in X, whatever it is,
and that just everyone knows where to find us.
And if they wanted to engage us or learn more,
that they would know exactly what step to take.
And that’s just not the reality.
– And even if it is, like, you know,
it puts a lot of the, you know,
onus on the prospect to take that leap of faith or like,
I don’t know, unless the pain is really,
really strong for them, it’s like, okay,
who is that guy again?
I gotta find their thing and sign up for the discovery call
or whatever the next step is.
But I don’t know, I’m kind of with you there.
You probably have been guilty of this.
You almost have to be reminded of it.
You know, there’s probably some marketing.
Oh, you gotta see the offer seven times
before you take action on it.
But there absolutely is something to this.
– Yeah, and so that’s where this offer post, you know,
making that offer, putting it in front of people regularly.
And it can literally be the same post
that you post once a month that says, here’s what I do.
Here’s the people that typically benefit most
from my services.
Here are some of the results I’ve received.
A book or discovery call or go to this website
if you’d like to learn more, send me a DM.
One thing that’s a really crispy good call to action
to use is send me a DM with info.
Like tell them exactly the message to send you
so that they don’t have to sit there in front
of a blank page again and go, you know,
dear Joe, I’ve been struggling with my business
or, you know, take that out of their hands
and just say, send me a DM with, you know, keyword
and I’ll send you some more information.
And just repeating that process regularly
and not being shy about that
because you’re adding new audience all the time.
People are busy and they’re scrolling through content.
And so putting that offer in front of them
on a consistent basis is going to help you grow your business.
– Okay, is that automated?
Like you see that all the time on Instagram specifically,
like, you know, through many chat or something
like comment, hustle and I’ll send you my, you know
free guide to XYZ.
– You can automate that.
I personally don’t.
I’m trying to just get a prospect to send me a DM
and then I’m handling those myself individually.
But that is another trend that’s going on LinkedIn
at the moment is, yeah, comment keyword
for a free copy of my guide.
Again, commenting is really good for virality,
but I’ve heard rumors that LinkedIn is cracking down
on this kind of behavior as well.
So I would be suggesting DM a keyword to me kind
of below the surface rather than a public comment.
– Yeah, that’s fair because it is obnoxious
to see people with really, really,
but I like, I know how the game is played.
So I could like have some level of appreciation for it,
but at the same time, like, really?
Is this what we’re going to do right now?
Okay, all right, well, that was awesome.
It was a great crash course on LinkedIn.
You got me inspired to kind of spruce up my profile
and maybe make a renewed effort to post anything
over there.
I don’t know, it’s probably been years since I posted,
but we can do that after the call.
More with Joe in just a moment,
including his business idea donation
for side hustle show listeners right after this.
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Let’s move on to round two.
This is donate a business idea.
This is something that you might start if you had more time.
This is something that you wish existed in the world.
This is something, you know, maybe you see an opportunity
you think listeners could run with.
And so with that, I’ll kick it back to you.
– Yeah, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time recently.
Like I would say a lot of people listening in chat GPT
and spend a lot of time at that very surface level,
you know, sending it funny prompts,
asking it random facts and figures,
but more recently have dived deeper
into building custom GPTs.
So you can train chat GPT on your coaching calls
with clients on your previous content,
essentially building a personalized AI tool for yourself.
And I could see a million and one different uses for this.
It might be a custom recipe GPT.
It might be activities to do with the kids
on a rainy weekend like custom GPT.
I think it doesn’t take much expertise
to be a couple of steps ahead
of where your average audience member
or average GPT user is to have a lot of capability
to build something that’s bespoke
to a like a one-to-one kind of custom GPT offer.
And I can just see so many different uses for it.
– Yeah, I had thought there was some sort of character limit
or internal memory.
And this could be just for chat GPT specifically,
where it’s like you can upload 4,000 words of something,
but it’s like, you’re talking about here,
what if we uploaded the last 600 episode transcripts
from the side hustle show?
Like some big body of work or, you know,
here’s a copy of my book, you know,
how would Nick answer these questions?
Like that’s kind of what you’re trying to ultimately build.
So this is kind of a separate tool.
I don’t know, where do you go to start
with something like that?
– Yeah, so you can go,
and this is based on kind of chat GPT
as it exists now in January, 2025.
But you can go into explore GPTs
and then you can hit the, there’s a plus icon
in the top right, I think.
And you do need to have the paid version of chat GPT.
And you can then add attachments to a knowledge base.
You give it a set of master prompts,
basically that it will follow every time,
build, add some attachments in a knowledge base.
And all of a sudden you can create
whatever kind of AI assistant you need.
It’s very powerful technology.
– And then the game plan would be
to sell this to another company?
– Well, potentially I could see,
I could see side hustlers selling this to individuals.
I could see people, yeah, selling it to companies,
people who maybe are trying to streamline some of their,
whether it’s their content creation
or have questions answered,
like an almost build an FAQ library
from existing kind of resources and assets that they’ve got.
I think there’s endless possibilities.
– I do see, I mean, maybe this is how they accomplish that.
Some of like the live chat customer support widgets
on certain websites, you ask them a question
and it used to be, I don’t understand that,
let me connect you with the human.
But more and more recently it’s like,
hey, it looks like you’re asking a question about this.
Here’s, they must have fed in some sort of large language model
like based on the, and it spit out a semi-coherent answer
without connecting to a human.
And so maybe that’s one potential application.
I’m trying to go the next step, like the idea sounds cool,
but like, who would be a customer base?
Like, could you pre-sell a customer versus like,
I’m gonna build this out
’cause you may not even have access to this library of content
or a custom health GPT, you know,
given that it’s New Year’s resolution season,
like, oh, we’re gonna, if you want to optimize for,
you know, glucose, I don’t know,
the anti-inflammatory GPT, right?
Or something and, you know, build in, you know,
upload everything that can be found
about that specific topic.
– Yeah, I think where I’m seeing this is just,
for someone who has some time
and is wanting to build a side hustle,
educating yourself on a tool as powerful as chat GPT
and being able to just be a few steps ahead
of your average person,
I think could be quite easily monetized in a whole bunch of ways.
Like, could just be one-to-one training sessions
for boomer dad at home
who wants to learn what this AI thing is about.
It doesn’t take too long to follow your nose on YouTube
or wherever you can find information to get,
arm yourself with enough knowledge
to create some really interesting stuff
that you could then educate others on,
who are a few steps behind you on the same path.
– Okay, and I’d heard of people using it
almost as a co-founder,
as your business coach,
so your spitballing ideas about.
And it may make sense to provide it with more context
than is available on just like the, you know,
public interface free version.
And so you may need to do this plus icon project-based thing.
Like, here’s my financials,
here’s everything that’s gone on in the business so far.
Here’s my biggest challenges.
Like, you know, what do you recommend type of content?
– Yeah, and so I guess one really specific use case for me
has been take some coaching call transcripts
and some sales or discovery call transcripts,
upload those and build essentially
an ideal customer profile.
So I create like an AI version of my ideal customer.
And I then send it email newsletters that I’ve got in draft.
I share draft LinkedIn content with it.
I position offers to it and say, you know,
get its honest feedback based on everything that it knows,
build that person, like literally build an AI avatar
of who you’re trying to talk to, who you’re trying to target
and then bounce ideas off it and see what it thinks.
– Yeah, respond as if you are, you know,
this target prospect.
What do you think of this sales copy?
Or what do you think of this?
– Well, literally, so even deeper than that,
you actually create and you give them,
I give them names so that I don’t kind of lose track.
But my kind of ideal customer profile is called Sarah.
And so she, like she is that persona.
So she’s got kind of that revenue detail.
She’s heard my coaching calls.
Like she’s built a profile of my ideal audience.
And then I send stuff to her.
– Does she give you coherent responses?
Does she give you helpful responses?
Or is like, I’m just talking with a robot here.
– Yeah, no, if you spend the time,
and there’s kind of a process guide that I’ve outlined
to feed it the right prompts to prepare it.
And the key is to get that knowledge base
and that master prompt right.
And if you do that, the results have really surprised me.
I think the one thing I would say is large language models
have essentially just absorbed everything on the internet.
And they really respond to you by kind of predicting
what words generally follow other words in a sequence.
So they’re not as much as it can feel like
they’re thinking critically and logically at the moment
as of whenever this podcast goes out.
They’re not actually thinking.
They’re just playing back kind of,
they’re playing a guessing game really
of what words logically feed in a sequence.
But it’s very useful.
– Okay, and so you can, instead of having consumed
the entire archive of the internet,
you want to feed it very specific information
to become an expert in your business
or in one specific area.
– No.
– All right, I’ve got a lot to,
we need to do another like AI roundup episode.
It’s probably been a couple of years.
It’s like, I know so much has changed
and there’s a lot more that I could be doing in that space
to work smarter, not harder,
even if it’s just with repurposing help
or all sorts of strategy, other next step, step.
But that’s fascinating, custom GPT creation,
Joe’s business idea donation for you.
Let’s move on to round three, which is our triple threat.
And we’re gonna start off with a marketing tactic
that’s working right now.
Could be LinkedIn related, could be something else.
– Yeah, so the tactic that’s working for me right now,
we talked a lot about creating what I think of
as broadcast content, publishing a LinkedIn post,
sending an email and newsletter,
publishing a podcast episode, so one to many.
Something that’s working really well for me,
if we think about, I guess the line of work that I’m in,
which is sort of high ticket consultancy, I guess,
and coaching, sales are gonna happen
in one-to-one conversations.
It’s highly unlikely that a broadcast piece of content
is gonna directly convert into a sale.
So my goal is to get into one-to-one conversations
with people that may wanna buy from me.
And so what I’m doing now is,
whether it’s an email newsletter or a LinkedIn post
that goes out, I’m grabbing it and I’m trying to find
three to five people, I guess, somewhere in my CRM,
in my funnel, I guess I would use the term prospects,
and sending that piece of content to them one-to-one.
And so it’s a simple message like,
hey, Nick, I wrote this post about
the three types of content you need
to build your side hustle, and I thought of you.
And sending that kind of one-on-one to a small handful
of people in my orbit has really rapidly increased
the number of conversations I’m having
with relevant people, ’cause you’re giving a gift.
– Okay, even if they may already be on your email list,
even if they may already have it in their inbox,
like just one extra follow-up to be like,
hey, just want to make sure you saw this,
or hey, I thought of you when I wrote this or something.
– Yeah, you lead with some value, you give a small gift,
and it sparks conversations more often than not.
And so that’s, and again, this idea of trying
to harvest content ideas, never stare at a blank page,
like use the stuff that you’ve already produced,
and then get the most mileage out of it
that you possibly can.
– Anything that you’re using, I don’t know if your CRM
has contact scoring or any criteria,
’cause if you have a list of thousands of people,
like how are you picking who to send this to?
– Yeah, look, my CRM is a very simple spreadsheet.
I have kind of a last contact date
and like a rough nurture date,
and I’m trying to keep those a few weeks apart.
So I’m just sorting by who’s kind of due
or overdue for a nurture,
and then thinking about the content I’ve created recently
and trying to line those two things up.
– Okay, all right, just trying to stay top of mind
and share some goodwill.
– Absolutely.
All right, sales happen one to one.
How are you cultivating those one-on-one relationships,
inviting people to do business with you,
love that tactic?
The next segment here is a new or new to you tool
that you’re loving right now.
We talked chat GPT, we talked a few other tools,
but anything that comes to mind here.
– Yeah, so this is a little bit maybe in the reverse
of the idea of the segment,
but I actually removed the mail app from my iPhone
over the holidays, and it has been a game changer.
So I turned off notifications for mail or email,
and I actually found that was weirdly
making me spend more time in email
’cause I was always refreshing
to see if anything had come in.
And so I just made the switch over just before Christmas,
removed the mail app from my phone,
and so email is now confined to a batch period of time,
like maybe once in the morning, once in the afternoon,
each day on my computer, and that’s it.
And I’ve just found my head space massively open up.
I’m not half wondering in my phone
if this could I have a quick look and check.
I’m just, it’s really helped me compartmentalize
my evenings and my time off.
– Yeah, that makes sense.
And it sounds like it was email in your case,
but it might be TikTok and somebody else’s,
it might be Instagram, whatever is that thing that,
I’m just going in for a quick check,
and then 15 minutes later,
you’re completely derailed and distracted,
and you’re, especially if you’ve got kids,
they see you staring at your phone all the time,
like it’s not great.
So what is that app that needs to get deleted?
You know, maybe go cold turkey, see how much you miss it.
And you know, I imagine there’s some withdrawal symptoms
early on and hopefully you get over that,
but that’s a really interesting one.
I don’t know if anyone has shared that, so I like that.
And your favorite book from the last 12 months.
– Yeah, so this is one that’s still on the bedside table.
It’s not quite finished,
but I’ve taken a lot out of it already.
His “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Godara,
who was the owner, or sorry, not the owner,
but the manager of 11 square, 11 Madison Park in New York.
So one of the best restaurants in the world.
And he shares all his insights
on how he built a world leading team,
but really how he thinks about serving customers
and being hospitable.
And so I did some really interesting client gifting
at the end of 2024, just using this idea,
like the thinking of unreasonable hospitality,
like what is a crazy nice thing I could do for my clients?
Well, so I made a donation to a charity
that I’m passionate about called Just Digit on their behalf
and sent everyone a personalized video note.
You know, I don’t have thousands or hundreds of customers,
but just spending that time to say hi
and completely personalize one-to-one tailored to them.
And the response I got was really uplifting for me as well.
It was a massive win-win.
And so that book has just taught me to think,
and for us, like if it’s a side hustle
or a solopener business, like we can do that stuff.
You know, we are building personal connections
with the people that we’re serving.
And so leaning into that
is really powerful on both sides, I reckon.
– “Unreasonable Hospitality” was the book recommendation.
That is a new title to me.
So we’ll have to check that one out.
We’ll link it up in the show notes
along with all the other resources mentioned in this episode,
including Joe’s newsletters called The Thought Follower.
You can find it at joemacai.info, m-c-k-a-y.info.
Follow along for more LinkedIn tips,
other solopreneur strategies.
I think you’re gonna like it.
We’ll link that up.
And Joe, thanks so much for joining me.
There’s been awesome.
I’m taking a ton of notes on LinkedIn and everything else
and I appreciate your recommendations on what is working here
this year.
Now, if you’re new to the show, welcome.
Thank you for tuning in.
We’ve got hundreds.
You know, if you’re just starting here,
you got hundreds of episodes in the back catalog
to help you make more money.
And if you’re wondering where to start,
I wanna invite you to build your own personalized playlist.
All you gotta do is go to hustle.show.
How it works is you answer a few short,
multiple choice questions.
You tell me a little bit about your side hustle interests,
your goals, where you’re at, where you wanna go.
And the machine is gonna recommend
eight to 10 personalized episodes for you.
And this is a newly updated list for this year.
So again, that’s hustle.show
to get that custom curated playlist.
Big thanks to Joe for sharing his insight.
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That’s it for me.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
If you’re finding value in the show,
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So fire off that text message to somebody
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And until next time, let’s go out there
and make something happen.
I’ll catch you in the next edition
of the Side Hustle Show.
If you’re looking to turn LinkedIn into a money-making machine, you’re in the right place.
Joe McKay has taken his LinkedIn ghostwriting side hustle from zero to a multi-six-figure business, generating millions of impressions along the way.
And he’s here to fill us in on how to make money on LinkedIn this year.
We broke down the 3 types of posts you need to make money on LinkedIn, how to navigate the platform as a side hustler, and the most common (and costly) mistake people make.
Listen to Episode 651 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- the 3 LinkedIn posts every side hustler must use
- why building connections strategically changes the game
- how to avoid the costly mistake most people make
Subscribe to Joe’s The Thought Follower newsletter for more LinkedIn tips and solopreneur strategies.
Full Show Notes: How to Make Money on LinkedIn
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