0 to 45k in 6 months: How Lee McCabe beat LinkedIn

Transcription

Matt: Lee McCabe is the top voice in private equity on LinkedIn. Beyond his 45,000 followers and the hundreds of thousands of impressions that he's generated, what's even more impressive is the wealth of experience that Lee brings from companies like Meta, Alibaba, and multiple private equity firms. In the episode, we talk about Lee's secret formula behind how he crafts his viral LinkedIn posts. But more importantly, why Lee believes more private equity firms and professionals need to seriously consider LinkedIn in 2026. I was honestly blown away by Lee in this episode. You won't want to miss it. Let's get into it. Welcome to Connection Accepted. Today, we've got Lee McCabe on the podcast. Lee, thanks for coming on. Daniel: Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Matt: Lee, for the people who have no idea who you are, can you just give a quick background on who you are, what you do, where you're from? Daniel: Sure. I'm English originally, as you get from the accent, been in the US for the past 15 years. Background was really in big tech with eBay, Expedia, Facebook, Alibaba, moved into private equity several years ago and launched my own firm in January this year. Matt: That's awesome. And one very important detail, you also have 45,000 followers on LinkedIn. Is that right? 45,000? Daniel: Yeah. About that. Yeah. Just a mere 45,000. Matt: Lee's been absolutely crushing it on LinkedIn, and we're so excited to get into that today. But Lee, before we do get into LinkedIn specifically, how did you even go from the big tech space into the private equity space? Because those are two very different worlds. Daniel: Yeah. Look, I saw an opportunity. My last job in big tech was I ran North America for Alibaba Group. And one of the primary jobs there was to get all the major US brands to sell into China on Alibaba's Tmall platform. It was really a no-brainer because the audience that Tmall has, it was really the easiest way to sell anything in China. So as I was pitching to all these brands, you know, they were also getting me to pitch to the boards, and it really opened my eyes to PE because most of these brands are owned by PE. And it opened my eyes to the grasp that private equity had across a lot of businesses. And it also opened my eyes to how not digital private equity was. So when I left Alibaba, I set my sights on getting into PE and specifically working on digital value creation at PE because that's where I saw the opportunity. You know, traditionally, PE buys a lot of businesses. And if you look at most of PE, they're not sexy businesses. They're not tech businesses. They're all boring businesses that make a lot of money. But these big old boring businesses also hadn't digitized. And coming from a digital background, it just struck me as being crazy. And I thought it, you know, digital wasn't talked about a lot in PE. And to me, it was a no-brainer that it should have been one of the biggest levers of value creation in private equity. So that's why I made the jump. Matt: And when you talk about digital value creation, Lee, for people who have no context or aren't familiar with that term, what exactly are you guys going in and doing at these businesses to create value? Daniel: It's very simple. It's creating a digital foundation in these businesses. So basically, you know, you fix the tech stack, first of all. The tech stack is the foundation of any business nowadays. And you can build a pretty good tech stack pretty cheap, right? You don't need to build anything anymore. Everything's off the shelf. You API together. So you build a tech stack built on data, and then you should do two things. It should make your customer journey very efficient, and it should give you a business built on data. So, you know, you're not making guesses anymore. There's no more gut feel. You should be able to measure everything going on in your business. Every customer connection should be tagged and tracked. You should have full attribution of that business. So you fix the tech stack, the foundation. Once you do that, you start having a business built on data. You drop BI on top of that to build out all the dashboards. So at every level of the business, from the CEO down, they can see all their KPIs and they can manage their business better. And then you introduce a digital marketing team. You digitize the marketing team. You digitize the sales team. And you see big lifts straight away because a lot of these traditional companies still are not really that digital. And really haven't done a lot of digital marketing. You know, PE buys companies and typically the founder has been with the company a long time and they're traditional media guys. So they're spending 80% of their budget on TV and radio, which is still, there's still use for that to fill the top of funnel. But you flip it to say it probably should be about 70% digital going forward. And you do all the things that make sense on digital. You invest in Google. You invest in Meta. You invest in all the platforms where your customers are. If you build the tech stack correctly, you can measure attribution. You can measure ROI and brass. So you start the flywheel to profitably acquire new customers and grow your business. Matt: Lee, I want to give an example for the audience to make sure we're all on the same page about digital value creation in private equity. Because I think private equity is something that can sometimes be misunderstood by a lot of people. And if we use the example of either an electrician or a dentist, from my understanding, what private equity is doing is buying a bunch of electricians or dentist shops. And then what you're doing with this digital value creation piece is saying, okay, let's have an online appointment schedule system for all of our electricians or for the dentists. And then let's have a CRM or a way to track all of our customers. Matt: So if business is a little bit slow, maybe we'll run a coupon for the electricians or we're going to automate our payroll and use other technology that probably isn't being done because it's a small mom and pop shop that can't afford it or doesn't have the tools to do that. And through using those tools like automating your HR and appointment scheduling, you're saving a lot of costs where people in this business can spend more time doing what they actually love. And that's where you're creating the value. Is that in a nutshell what private equity? Daniel: That's all public. The things you mentioned are more about the efficiency. If we take that case you said, electricians, or let's just say general home service. So home services in general are a good play for private equity. Roofing, HVAC, electricians, plumbing. They're good businesses because they're resilient. No matter what the macro is doing, if your roof has a hole, you need to get it fixed regardless of how the economy is. If your HVAC breaks down, you need to get it fixed. So these are good industries, but a lot of them haven't moved with the times. And it's also about reframing what that industry is. So, you know, I work a lot of CEOs. And if you ask CEOs of these businesses, most of the time they will say, I run a roofing business, or I run a HVAC business. The best CEOs in this space will tell you, I run a sales and marketing business. That's it. Because lead generation is my business. You know, if I'd become a master generating leads in this business, I will have a great business and I'll smoke competition. Now, of course, your sales team's got to be good and your product's got to be good and all your back end has got to be good and your service has got to be good and delivery has got to be good. But it's really a lead generation business. So we build lead generation engines. So if you're an electrician, you need to be found, right? That's half the battle. And there's just hygiene factors in digital that a lot of companies don't do, right? You need to be found on Google. So your SEO has got to be better than anything. Your business profiles have got to be as good as they can be on Google. Most of it is about being found. Then if you've done all the necessary foundational improvements on the tech stack and all the tracking, you start spending on Google. And if you've done that wisely, you'll get to a point where you can start spending and you'll know your margin. You'll know the economics of the business. And you should get to a point where you say, look, I know what a transaction is. I know what the LTV is. Let's say it's $1,000. And before long, you get to a point on Google where you say, look, I can spend up to $200 for a lead. I know I can convert that at 50%. So $400 for a transaction, that's profitable for me to make $1,000. Matt: So you get to a point of scalability where you say, look, there's no marketing budget anymore to open because I'll just spend all day long in this machine generating leads. As long as I can hold the cost of a lead at that price, and as long as I carry on converting at 50% or whatever it is, I'll spend all day long. So it's really building lead generation machines for these businesses and making sure they're optimizing the marketing engine, the lead generation, and the marketing spend as wisely as possible. Daniel: Yeah, I love the way that you broke it down. You probably worked with many different businesses when you were doing these digital value creation plays. What are some of the most common challenges that middle market businesses, from what you could observe, faced when it comes to improving their lead generation capabilities? Matt: It's always two things. It's tech stack and people. And when I talk about value creation drivers, digital is one of the biggest ones. People is always the biggest one. So you know, just the culture of organizations and the talent you have. And I always tell companies, like, overpay. Overpay to get superstars in your business. You want a superstar CMO who understands performance marketing, who is analytically driven, who has an intellectual curiosity, who will test and learn on every single channel at their disposal to find you customers and find you profitable customers. And then absolutely employ a superstar for your sales team. Because you could build the best marketing engine in the world. If your sales team aren't good enough to convert those leads, it's going to fall down. If your sales team aren't good enough to track those leads and enter the data in the CRM to help you with attribution, it's going to fall down. So I would say always overpay. Get the superstars that can build your business. That's one. And then give them the tools to do that well. That's the tech stack. Build a tech stack that's going to give them all the data so they know exactly what's going on across that business. They know where every call is coming from. They know where every lead form is coming from. They can attribute that to the channel, the channel attribution they can attribute to every cent they spend on that channel so you've got full visibility and full attribution. Daniel: Lee, if this performance marketing and digital value creation that you're doing in private equity sounds like, you know, it's just a cash printing machine. Now I know it's not as easy as that. Matt: It takes a lot of work to get the right people in place, and I know you've been doing it for a while, but what led you to post on LinkedIn and take time away from this machine that seems to be working incredibly well, especially when you don't know how much it's going to pay off when something like a Facebook ad clearly has a return on investment? Daniel: Because a couple of things, I think building a profile, building a personal profile is important, and I think building a business profile is important. And LinkedIn is really the easiest and the cheapest way to do it because it's costing me time. That's it. Right. I'm not paying for anything. I'm not paying advertising on LinkedIn or anything else. It's just the time. And the catalyst was, you know, I always knew LinkedIn was an important channel, but like everyone else, there were a couple of hurdles. You've got to get over cringe mountain and just start posting right on LinkedIn. So I thought about it for a while. I only really started posting in May this year. Matt: And before that, you know, I spoke to a few firms like you guys are doing, who are going to drive your profile on LinkedIn and get you business and figure out what you post and have a strategy. And I spoke to quite a few smart firms about it, but you know, they're expensive. And I thought, hmm, I'm not sure I need to pay that. But I listened to what they said and thought, okay, that makes sense. You know, you have a cadence of your posts, and at the end of the day, it's all about the quality of the content. And I think if you post quality content, people will read it. So, you know, I started posting in May. I was in a coffee shop in England at the time. I posted one day and it got quite a few impressions. And then I posted the next day and it just blew up the second post. And then the light bulb went off and I went, huh, okay, I think there's something in this. So then I kind of worked out just a cadence of how I post and how I write content and how I curate that content and went from there. Daniel: Lee, that's incredible that you've been posting for less than a year and you've seen the growth that you've already seen. When you say posting quality content is the number one thing, I completely agree with you there. If we were to just unpeel that a little bit more though, what does quality content look like on LinkedIn from your perspective? Like, are there certain things that people should be paying attention to when they create their content? Matt: It's a tough one, Mike, because we're all figuring this out. I think, like I posted one of your comments this week, we're all trying to game the system, right? SEO is a billion-dollar industry built on gaming Google. Trying to make yourself look more important than you are, more important than competition to get those eyeballs. LinkedIn is the same, but I think it's more of a black box, way more of a black box than Google. So, you know, figuring that out is the hard thing. Matt: But back to your question, quality content. It's been easier than I thought. I mean, basically, I'm authentic on LinkedIn. Working in private equity, unlike Bain, you are locked down from LinkedIn. You're not allowed to post anything when you're working. I'm sure that's the same at most PE firms. You're not allowed to post anything or even like things on LinkedIn or any social platform. So really, I just started posting with an authentic voice about things that I've been thinking about for a long time. So I think the good content, it helps if it's a bit provocative, which a lot of my content is. But again, these are things I kind of have been thinking about for a long time. During the week, I just make notes. If I think about something new, I'll make a note and then come back to it. But for me, I've got no, there's no real secret sauce to it. I read LinkedIn, look what people are talking about. Mostly it just comes from what I'm thinking about at the time. Daniel: I think the secret sauce for you is probably the fact that you have years of experience. And so everything that you write about is, well, one, it resonates with a lot of your audience. And Lee, I remember when you and I first chatted, I think this was maybe in September or August, you told me that the things that people say behind the closed boardroom doors, you are essentially coming out here and saying that out in public, which normally private equity guys, they wouldn't dare to post on LinkedIn about something like that. But because you're the one that's coming out here and saying it, everyone agrees. Everyone relates to it. And you're one of the few voices. I mean, maybe you, Edwin, a couple other guys potentially, are actually coming out here and talking in an authentic way. I think if I were to just look at your profile, that is what I think has very much contributed to the growth so far. Matt: Yeah, I'd agree. And I mean, the thing is, now I have my own firm, I can say what I want. I'm not locked down by working for a PE firm anymore. And I think everyone else is. Everyone else works for a firm and can't say what they really think on LinkedIn. It's interesting. I get a lot of DMs from people in PE who say, we can't post. I can't publicly comment on this, but you're absolutely right in what you're saying in this. And I think that's also an opportunity. You know, PE has this kind of mystique around it and a lot of PE firms will say, well, we've got a secret sauce and there's a lot of secrets involved in PE. And there's no secret sauce in PE. You know, how you grow business is how people have been growing businesses for years. So just kind of speaking about that gets the attention. Daniel: I totally agree, Lee, because there, and I know Edwin Yoon, who Mattis referenced and a future guest of the show, he does similar stuff to you and talks about how, you know, there are more PE shops in America than McDonald's stores and a bunch of other of these cool stats. Matt: But I'm curious, as you've figured out your voice on LinkedIn, how did you realize this more authentic and sometimes controversial and a little bit, you know, pulling at the emotions of some people is what worked? Daniel: Well, look, there was no tactics behind this. I didn't start writing posts and then thinking I should make this more provocative. I should make this more controversial. It's authentic, it's me. I write the posts in my own voice. I'm British, I have a sarcastic sense of humor. I guess we're naturally provocative as a nation. So yeah, there's no strategy to being more provocative in these posts or dialing it up or dialing it down. I just write how I talk. Matt: I love it. Can you run us through your process from idea all the way to hitting post? Daniel: Yeah, so look, I changed over time on this to begin with. You know, I'd write posts and then trying to figure out what worked and write more posts. But the thing is, like I said earlier, this is a black box. It's really hard to predict what's going to work on LinkedIn. You're kind of like, man, I think I said to you on a previous call, it's like being a stand-up comic. Right, you put it out there. I don't know if it hits, some of it bombs. But it's still hard to tell what's going to hit and what's going to bomb, but hopefully you kind of learn over time and you build that muscle. And it helps you write better posts going forward. The process is for me now, you know, I will, I use Buffer to schedule, and I'll probably write the last batch. I spend a weekend and wrote two months worth of posts and scheduled them for the two months. So your point earlier about the time, I mean, that's really my time investment. And I just make sure I'm there every day for the first 30 minutes to reply to the first handful of responses. Then that's it. I do, I do my day job and then feel all the DMs coming in and the requests and responses. And that's a mixed bag as well. You know, like you guys, you, you get a lot, but I would say about 10% are pretty valuable. 10% are good leads. They're people I would want to talk to. There's people I would potentially do business with. So I think that's a pretty good hit rate. Matt: When you're writing these posts, I mean, I mean, that's awesome. You can knock out a month's worth of content in just a weekend. Are you like having ideas throughout the day? You're texting yourself? Are you using a LinkedIn text editor to optimize your hooks or are you just going into the LinkedIn post editor or this tool that you're using and just schedule posting? Daniel: It's very simple. I just use stickies to make my notes. So every time I've got an idea, I've make the note and I've got a long list of things that I'm thinking about. And then I'll go and write them. And then I'll use ChatGPT to augment them. Because you know, ChatGPT, I don't use that a lot for ideas, but its writing is better than mine and its prose is better than mine. Uh, and it works. Matt: And you get a lot of people, as you guys probably will as well, and others do flaming you for saying this is ChatGPT. It's actually not. ChatGPT uses, it should be like a co-pilot. I think it's valuable. If, as long as you're not using ChatGPT to come up with all your ideas and then write the full post for you, and you're leaving the emojis in there and the M dashes and everything else, you just, you just become a post factory and you're not even thinking about it. That's problematic and that doesn't work. But I, I think if you use ChatGPT like a co-pilot, how it should be used, if it can make the content better, then everyone should do it. Are there any posting conspiracies that you do adhere to Lee? Like a bunch of previous guests say they'll only post at 9 a.m. every day or some people need the hook to be less than 63 characters, or some people don't want to post more than three times a day or more than two times a day. And we all make up all sorts of rules. So I'm curious if there are any that you've made up for yourself or that you have stats for what you do. Daniel: No, the honest answer is not really. When I first started posting, I paid attention to the times. It's probably the main thing I paid attention to. And does it make a difference? I'm not sure it does. I'm, I'm not any metrics that show that it makes a difference. I posted some posts on three o'clock in the afternoon and they've, they've gone on fire. So I don't think it makes a difference. I think intuitively though, you know, I tried to post at around 8 a.m. Eastern Standard time, just so people get to work and open the posts. That's it. To quickly dispel your dislike for posting at 3 p.m. or any other time in the afternoon, now that I know it's not the big of a deal, but some of these, the Cody Sanchez, you know, call it rage bait or whatever, those I did was at eight o'clock on a Saturday and I woke up the next morning to like 80,000 impressions. So that to me of anything else is like, you know, timing does not matter. I don't think it does. I mean, one of the biggest posts I did, I think was like four o'clock on a Friday, Friday afternoon because I just had an idea and there was nothing posted that day. So I just quickly, quickly posted it and it blew up. So I, I think you're right. There's there's probably something, the timing. Is it a massive lever? Probably not. Matt: It's funny because, you know, we're, we're addicted to social media. It's not like we're only on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn just for the business hours during the workday. It's like we're on it all the time because we like seeing the content, you know, it's not like it's a bank where it like closes after business hours. The apps open 24 7. Daniel: Yeah, It's funny that a lot of the times I get a ton of impressions is just commenting on people's posts. That's surprised me as well. Daniel: Uh, I should probably do that a lot more, but some of the, some of the comments, and they just, they're just quick comments, maybe no more than a paragraph on some posts have got thousands of impressions. Yeah, it's an incredibly powerful way to extend your reach without having to put in nearly as much effort as drafting up a full post. Lee, in terms of posting frequency, are you posting usually five times a week? Have you tried posting multiple times in a day? What does that look like for you? Matt: Three times a week. That's it. I used to, when I started off and I got hooked, I think I was posting five times a week, just Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Uh and I realized I probably don't need to. And it was taking more time for the first 30 minutes every morning getting up to check the comments. So then I moved to four. Currently, I'm at three, just Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And then that leaves me Monday and Friday to do my day job. Because LinkedIn is a, is a full-time job. Um love that. Daniel: And have you noticed any change in the growth trajectory since going down to three as opposed to five? Matt: Hardly any. Hardly any. Incredible. It's hard to call. And no, again, when I look at the trajectory, I can't see a big difference. It's all about the quality of the post. So like I could be posting five posts that don't hit at all. And then one week I post three posts and just one goes bananas. And that's something again, back to our conversation before, you just can't call which posts are going to blow up or not. That's, that's one of the many fun things about it. Now more importantly, though, you go, Matt. Daniel: Yeah, I had one question for you, Lee. So engagements versus impressions, as we know, are two different metrics. And as you said earlier, the private equity community, there's usually less people that can engage, even if they resonate with whatever it is you're writing about. But your most, at least from what I can observe on your profile, your most viral post based on engagements, I think it has 2,000 plus engagements. Is that also your most viral when it comes to the number of impressions, or is there a different post that you've made that has higher impressions than that? Matt: Which was the post that you were referring to? Daniel: It's the one about if you were to create a private equity firm in 2025, like that, this is the approach that you would take. And you kind of go into, you know, being very like value creation focused. Those ones did well and got a ton of engagement and a ton of impressions. The other ones that you guys do a lot are just commenting about LinkedIn. I did one post about, uh, I don't do this a lot about just archetypes on LinkedIn and the tricks on, on LinkedIn. Uh, that might be the highest one. I've had so far. Matt: Okay, so it's not, I'm just going to share my screen really quickly. It is not this post here. If I were building a PE firm from scratch, this does not have the highest impressions. Daniel: No, I think that one was way higher than that. But that, that might have been the second post I did. So when I, when I said earlier, I was sat in the cafe and my second post blew up. I think that was the second post. Fascinating. That's the thing. That's, that's the annoying thing about LinkedIn, right? I would, I would love the analytics to be better on LinkedIn. I would love the attribution to be better on LinkedIn because right now we're only valuing on vanity metrics, which I hate. And you know, whenever I work on these companies on marketing, and I, I think I posted about this, you know, you, you shouldn't give two shits about vanity metrics. Impressions mean nothing, right? Impressions and engagement mean nothing unless they're actually bringing you business. And that's the hard thing about LinkedIn. You know, I, I tell everyone in business that, and of course, every day I'm looking at impressions on LinkedIn because there's no other real great metric to look at. You're looking at impressions, engagement, but I'd love to see, well, actually, how many business driving conversations did I have as a result of that? How many messages did I get that I can directly attribute to that post? And then what did I do with those messages afterwards? Because ultimately, we're all doing this to make money, right? We're not doing it to just drive impressions and drive engagement. We're all selling something. So, you know, I would love LinkedIn. Or a third party to develop a better tracking system and a better attribution system to say, here's how much money you made off this post. Here's how many deals you got off this post. That would be great. And then we could all stop talking about impressions and engagement, but unfortunately, those are the only metrics that LinkedIn really gives us as a measure for quality. And they're very addictive to check. I mean, even though you're posting, only posting three times a weekly, how often do you think you're checking your impressions? Like over five times a day? Because I know I am. Matt: No, look, I'll probably check in the morning when I'm just replying to the first few comments that come through, probably just for the first hour. And then the first hour, most of the time you get a good feel for how well that post is going to perform based on the impressions and the engagement. And then look, maybe I'll check it again two or three times more during the day. Daniel: You have much more discipline than me. Are there any other things, Lee, that you would like to see on LinkedIn? Say you can talk to the chief product officer or the CEO of LinkedIn tomorrow. Is there anything else you would request besides better analytics? Matt: Look, I haven't started using Condor yet, but I might. I mean, I think just the inbox is terrible and just managing the inbox is tough. I think there are a lot of tools LinkedIn could build. One is just that basic attribution. I mean, help me understand how much business ultimately I win from posting on LinkedIn. Matt: Now, I know I'm winning a lot, which is great, but again, I'd love to see that tightly attributed to the post and when I posted it, so I could learn from that. And then if they did a good job of that, I'd spend more on LinkedIn. Because if they said to me, you know, these posts drove X amount of business for you, and if you pay $500, we could boost them, and because we've got good attribution, that would mean more business for you. And I'd spend all day long. Just like Google helped me to measure what my ROI is from your business. And it should actually be in your best interest because if you help me understand the ROI from this, then I'll start spending. Daniel: Yeah, well said. I mean, the attribution piece is so important. I'm curious your thoughts because LinkedIn's been pushing people to really spend on boosting posts. I'm sure you've seen this, you know, whenever now when you click post, immediately there's a thing that says, hey, do you want to boost your post to your audience? Have you tried that yet or what are your thoughts on them trying to... Matt: It doesn't strike me as good value. I can't recall the metrics, but it's something like, you know, spend $100 and we'll get you 5,000 more impressions. It's something like that. And I look at the value and think, well, I'm posting for free. On some posts, I'm getting 300,000 impressions. So why am I going to pay you $50 to give me 5,000 more? And again, when I don't know what that's going to get me back other than 5,000 impressions, which are really meaningless. Again, if they found a way to measure this way better than they do now and give me a way to attribute to a business and revenue, I'd happily spend it. What's your best link? Give me metrics to show me what works more because you guys post about this. They've been pushing video a lot. Now, if you're going to push video a lot, the thing that you should do is, if somebody follows your advice and starts using video, you would want to show them the evidence that those posts are going to do really well. And I've seen no evidence of that. The only video posts I've seen do well are the promoted posts. And the posts that actually LinkedIn are putting out and promoting themselves saying, use video or third party of their sponsoring to say, use video and then promoting those posts. But I've tried video a few times. It hasn't worked at all. So again, just tools to help me understand kind of what's best practice. What should I be doing other than the content? You know, should I be posting images? Should I be posting charts? Give me some metrics to kind of point me in a better direction and ultimately to help me spend money with you. If you want me to spend money, give me more intelligence around it so to help me understand what works. And then if you're going to push video, make sure your algorithm is aligned to that and does what it's supposed to, which right now it's not. Matt: Yeah, Lee, I, so I noticed that your content initially started out text only and over time you started branching out, right? Like you've tried some video. You've been using more images. Uh, you've done some more like funny, humorous type posts. I think there was one about like the dress code or the attire that you made recently. Yeah. That was a random one. Yep. How, have you noticed any patterns among the different formats of posts or, you know, image clearly, you know, you're not seeing a significant uplift if it's a video versus a regular image, but any other observations? Daniel: No, I think text does the best easily. I think good content, text only does the best. I have played around with a few things. I think the kind of the post I made about fashion sense on Wall Street and the Midtown bro outfit. Again, just something I was thinking about. And I had that conversation with colleagues a lot about that. I thought it was funny. And then one morning I thought it was a Monday, which I don't normally post. And I thought I'll post something. And then use the ideogram to make the image and drop that in. And that did exceptionally well. A few of the things I post about are just from presentations that I've made and a few slides that I think are particularly interesting. So I'll drop the slide in the post and then write the post about the concept in the slide. But I think if I analyzed it, I don't see any benefit from dropping images in there and definitely no benefit from dropping videos in any of these posts. Matt: It's fascinating. I'm curiously, what has been your best LinkedIn success story from a business perspective? Because I know it's annoying that LinkedIn doesn't have any of these features, but it is driving success for, you know, your business, I'm sure. And, you know, the same with Matt as well. So what are some of your best LinkedIn business stories? Daniel: It's so random, Mike. I mean, ultimately, I'm posting because I want to make better contacts to drive my main business, which is Clairemore Partners. And that's driven a lot of contacts. But then just, I think, random connections that come along. Random connections from other companies, like offers of board seats, offers of investment opportunities, offers to speak at different conferences. So it's hard to say this was the most successful kind of connection I made on there. I think there's value across the board and the fun thing is the unexpected ones that come through that may not directly be tied to my business, but are great opportunities and things that I wouldn't have, that wouldn't have happened unless I'd been posting on LinkedIn. Matt: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I completely resonate with you, Lee, on that. Daniel: I think since I really started actively posting over the summer, as I've been building Forge up, I've gotten a number of inbound leads, of course, to the business, current clients now that I'm working with that found me on LinkedIn, but also a lot of weird but unexpectedly positive opportunities, networking opportunities, events, things like that, that I never would have thought would have come through LinkedIn. So clearly there's a ton of benefit to posting online. If there's anything that you would tell, say a founder or someone in the private equity space who's thinking about posting on LinkedIn, but they're a little bit hesitant, what would you say to them? Just start or what's the worst that could happen? Just start. You know, it's funny, when I started talking to all these firms before I started posting, the one thing all of them wanted me to do was post videos of myself. And that was part of their value proposition. They said, look, we will interview you once a month and then we'll take the best snippets of those interviews and we'll post them and it'll be awesome. And I was always reticent. I'd always say, look, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And they'd push me and say, why don't you want to do it? And I'd say, look, to be honest, I don't want to look like a dick on LinkedIn. And most of these videos that I see of people talking in the camera in a very salesy way that looks contrived, I can't stand. So that's why I kind of pushed back on that. So I would say, just start. Just start posting on LinkedIn. Text is fine, but just be authentic. Just post what you do. You're seeing in your business. That's what people like. Post something new, be authentic, be transparent. I think that people like kind of the honesty in these posts, and do not try and sell anything. Those posts I can't stand either. Like, don't, don't try and sell anything in your post. Don't directly try and sell anything. And then don't indirectly try and sell anything. Don't make an authentic post and then drop in the last paragraph, a sales pitch for your business. I think, I think it turns people off. So yeah. Stop, stop posting, get over cringe mountain, start posting. You'll soon figure out what works. And you'll start learning. You'll start learning by the audience. You'll start learning by kind of the comments that you get. And then just put a bit of time away each week to post, post once a week, then post twice a week, whatever cadence you might feel appropriate. Stop posting three times a week and go from there. But I, I think there's just value of starting and value of, you know, the, the compounding effect. I think just good content, good authentic content, one, gets you all the Vandy metrics we discussed, engagement and impressions that day. But the rigour of posting a few times a week, the value that content compounds. I'm still getting likes from that post you pulled up. I still get likes occasionally each week from that. Daniel: I posted that six months ago. Lee, you hit on so many great points that Matt and I talk about all the time. Getting over cringe mountain, continuing to post, not trying to sound like an ad, like being upfront with your audience, being authentic. I'm curious though, like a lot of these things are things that aren't innate or in normal human nature for most people to do, not only on social media, but in real life. And sometimes Matt and I are still fighting this cringe mountain as we're posting like this week and thinking, you know, should, like, can, do people really want to hear from us? Is this not really my voice? How do you first get, how did you first get over cringe mountain? And then how do you continue to fight it every day? Matt: Uh, well, I don't fight it every day. I mean, I got over cringe mountain with the first two posts. I just started. Daniel: You're just like, I, we're done. Matt: Yeah, it was fine. I just started. And the second post that you just pulled up when it blew up and I got all this engagement and response, that's when I thought, okay, there's, there's something here and I'm just being myself. I'm posting authentically and I'm getting a ton of great response from this. It's great. Okay, I'm about to post again tomorrow. And it just builds. I got more good response and okay, I'll post again the next day and then I'll set up posts all next week and then I'll build from there. So I, I think cringe mountain is not a journey. I think it's more like a hurdle. Just you get over it once and you're there. And really what, what's the worst that can happen? Really? What's the worst, what's what's what's the worst that can happen? Someone doesn't like your post. All right, well, there'll be 10 more people that do like it for the one person that didn't like it. And the one person that didn't like it, I think there's actually validation there because it shows that your content is not vanilla. And that's also the worst thing you can do. Try and just write in boring vanilla content. You know, the, the, the content and kind of the, the provocative tone sometimes in my posts, I think that's what gets the engagement because there's a, there's an honesty kind of behind that. Uh, so I think there's a ton of value there. And you know what? Some people don't like it. You can't be loved by everybody. And the validation is it creates conversation and it creates debate. And I posted something last week about fractional, uh, fractional roles. That post blew up and had a ton of comments and not everyone agreed with me. And that's fine. I actually liked that. That, that just drives a good debate in these posts and validates you that you're actually posting about things that other people are thinking about and they want to talk about and people have an opinion about. And I think that's what good content looks like on LinkedIn. Daniel: I totally agree. Matt: I think we build up the fear of failure to be worse than the actual fear itself, because as you described Lee, through posting on LinkedIn, what's the worst that can happen? Like someone doesn't like it. Okay, well, other people do, and like, it's not that big of a deal. It's not like your girlfriend's going to break up with you. Claymore is not going to go bankrupt because of a LinkedIn, but you know, it's just like, it's so rational, but we build up this fear in our head for no reason. Yeah. I mean, the benefits greatly, greatly outweigh any cons of posting on LinkedIn. Daniel: Have you ever been stopped in the street and someone said, that's Lee from LinkedIn? Matt: That's cool. It's funny you ask that. I did go to a PE conference a month ago and three people recognized me from LinkedIn, which, which shocked me. I was like, yeah, I was, I was surprised at that. We just shut off. It shows you have the reach of the platform and the value of the platform. Daniel: Yeah, that's awesome. Your audience, especially Lee, LinkedIn is the place to be. So I'm actually not surprised. I think if you go to more conferences in the near future, you'll also have people who, uh, who recognize you. So that's, that's awesome to hear. Matt: So one thing I did want to dig into a little bit though, kind of going off of the thread you were talking about around cringe mountain, you know, not every post performs the same on LinkedIn. And as we just talked about the best, even the best content creators, the most experienced content creators, it's almost like you're a hedge fund manager and, and yes, you need a bat at least 51% to beat the market, but like you're going to make bad calls. It's just par for the course. Not all your posts are going to get a hundred thousand impressions. How do you get around that when a post doesn't perform? Daniel: I don't care. Like who cares? I'll post again tomorrow. Let's see what tomorrow's post looks like. That's it. It's just, it's perseverance. You, you carry on posting. It is like the analogy you, you just said, not every post is going to hit. And it's fine. Tomorrow, tomorrow's post might hit. The next day's post might hit. I think, but the, the, the confidence is that, you know, posts will hit. Now you can't make a great call which posts are going to hit. But I'm pretty confident once or twice a month, I'll get two posts that really hit. Matt: That's fine. That's huge. You're a machine Lee. Before we get into good idea, bad idea, I want to first ask a little bit more about Claymore and how LinkedIn is helping you there. Are, are you getting much better deal flow? And for the audience that's not familiar, essentially like what businesses you have the opportunity to invest in. Like you have more options because of your LinkedIn presence. Daniel: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Claymore is not a full PE firm yet. I'm really building a PE firm backwards. I'm building the operational platform first to improve all the, all the digital. Uh, I'm working with several PE firms right now. Daniel: So the value of that is, yeah, the con, the connections to more PE firms has been huge on LinkedIn and a major benefit. And then the ancillary benefits are what we were talking about before. Just the, the serendipity of the platform where I'll, I'll get connections that I wouldn't have called, you know, connections that I wouldn't have thought would have been useful, but I've had a conversation that's turned out to be exceptionally useful or connections and business opportunities that I really wasn't looking for, but have come my way and they've been great. So yeah, there's a ton of value. Matt: Has there been a crazy deal? Like, uh, You know, black start offering you a bunch of money that you've turned down because of LinkedIn. Daniel: No. Not yet. Not yet. Matt: No, I'm not sure. Nothing I can think of anyhow. I'm sure some big PE shop is going to come to you soon and be like, you know, Lee, we will pay you a bunch for a sponsored post about our firm. I mean, because if you were to do that, they'd get in front of the right people, maybe for recruiting or whatever it is. Daniel: Well, I'm building a different platform for that. So LinkedIn, one of my rules is I'm, I don't advertise and even, even vendors that I work with and want to, want to kind of pay me to do it. There's a strict no because I think once, once you start doing that, I think people see through it. And then I might post twice a week and I'm really promoting another firm. And to me, you just lose the authenticity. So I have a strict rule where I don't sell anything in those posts. You know, I, I post what I'm thinking about. That's it. If they connect with me afterwards and we have a conversation, of course I might, I might try and sell something then, but I would never sell. I never sell my business. In any of those posts, I certainly wouldn't sell a third party's business, even if they paid me well in any of those posts, because I think long term, it's not part of what building a brand is about. You want to build a brand with trust and authenticity. And I think as soon as you start selling things in those posts, you lose it. So to do that, again, LinkedIn opened my eyes to just the opportunity of a media platform and how private equity is greatly underserved right now. If you go to any private equity conferences, they're horrific. They're terrible. If you look at private equity media platforms, they're terrible. They're just boring. They're saying the same things that everyone else does. So I think a kind of a different voice in private equity, a more honest voice. I think there's an opportunity there. I launched a site called Not Very Private Equity, and that's getting a ton of traction already. So it's just something else that has come as LinkedIn was the catalyst, opened my eyes to the opportunity. So I launched that to be a differentiated private equity media business and having fun growing that as well. Matt: It also makes sense to me why you don't do a lot of the sponsorships, not only from the authenticity standpoint, but at the level you're operating in a thousand dollar or even $10,000 ad, if that's going to rub one person the wrong way, I mean, the deals you're making are in a much higher level, like in the millions, I'm sure. And that's not worth a, even if it's $10,000, which would be crazy for a LinkedIn brand deal. Yeah. I mean, so not very private equity, which would be a newsletter, there would be events. Yeah, sure. That could be sponsored all over the place. There's a ton of revenue opportunities, sponsorship opportunities there. But LinkedIn, in terms of a brand and my personal brand, you've just got to keep it clean, keep it clean, keep it authentic, carry on posting in the voice that everyone expects. And no, the audience will just carry on building and you'll get ancillary benefits from that over time. You're sticking to the fundamentals, just like you do in private equity. Yeah. It's not hard, but a lot of people miss it. Stick to the fundamentals. Daniel: One last thing, Lee, before I let you take over with good idea, bad idea. I think what you're doing with Claymore is really, really interesting. And you kind of alluded to the way that you're sort of building a private equity firm backwards. Can you just talk a little bit more about that? Because I think it's super fascinating, the approach that you have. Matt: Yeah, look, I think private equity is due for a change. There are a lot of funds that have raised their last fund, right? I think the problem has been the operational aspect. They employ operating partners. They don't really give the operating partners the remit to actually fix things in the portfolio companies. There's always a dance with the CEO of the portfolio companies, and it's really hard to get things done. And the irony is PE firms really don't get involved in a business until it's close to bankruptcy. And then they've got no choice. They have to go in and do something. And I get it, right? Because it's a financial business. And the best private equity investment would be you buy a company. You don't talk to them for four years and then you sell for 3X. That's the perfect investment. So traditionally, PE really hasn't wanted to get involved. They want to employ the best management team and cross their fingers and let the management team perform and sell. But private equity is getting a lot harder. There's a lot more competition to get these companies in private equity. You can't rely on financial engineering completely anymore. You have to build organic value creation in these businesses. And digital is one of the biggest levers. So I think it's been a challenge in the past where every private equity firm has an operating team, but they define them very differently. You ask 20 companies how they define an operating partner and what that person does, and you'll get 25 different answers back. Matt: And I think they also historically haven't moved fast enough. So they'll buy a company and they'll have a 100-day plan and it'll tick over. And then again, they'll wait until something bad happens and then they'll jump in. Where back to the fundamentals, there are some fundamental things you should do on every business. Like as soon as you buy a business, if I was a CEO, I'd want to make sure that business was built on data. I'd want to be able to measure everything I possibly could about that business. So there are some things PE firms should do when they buy businesses. They should say, look, trust us, we know what we're doing. We're going to fix the tech stack. We're going to make sure you can measure everything in your business. And then we're going to build you BI on top of that. And that should be music to the ears of a lot of CEOs because they're basically saying we're going to build you the tools to have full insight to your business. And if you've got full insight to your business, you should be able to run a better business. You should know what's going on. You should know what the levers are. You should know what your priorities are and you should be a lot more successful in that. So the platform for Claymore and PE is that. And that's what PE firms should do anyhow is just build the fundamentals from day one, build a business built on data, build a tech stack to run that business efficiently and effectively. And then once you do that, optimize your marketing, optimize your sales. And that's actually the easiest part because you can measure everything. Daniel: And so Lee, essentially you guys are, right now you're very much operational value creation, digital value creation focused, but you know, maybe like three to five years from now, do you see yourself raising a fund around that after you've built out those capabilities and the track record? Matt: Yeah, sure. Raising a fund or panning the fund. Because right now I'm doing the same thing. I'm working across several portfolio companies now building that digital foundation. So putting that in place for these companies. And every time they see success because their competition are not doing it, you digitize a business, you give them the insight, you give them the tools to go at a much faster clip than they've ever grown in the past. They'll see success. So yeah, at some point I'll raise a fund or panning the fund and buy these companies myself and do it. And when I talked about all funds, I think there are some funds that do do it differently. Like Vista and Toma Bravo. I think those guys have got the right approach because they will go in from day one and they'll say, this is our playbook. And there's no, there's no questions. This gets done. We're going to build you a tech stack. We're going to build you a suite for BI. We're going to give you all the insight you need because we've done this 50 times before and we know it works. So trust us. Daniel: So it's not all PE funds, but there are very few I know of like Toma and Vista that will go in and say, okay, day one, this is getting done. What excites me so much about this, Lee, is that also, you're kind of demystifying private equity in a way, because when you're posting on LinkedIn, you're using plain English. Like what you just described to Matt and I, it's not what a lot of private equity investors can always do when talking about their business. Like you're buying it, you know, mostly they have a hundred day plan and you're just making sure the hundred day plan is like a 365 plan and that this business has good ownership from day one and not just from day 100 and not day 101 for some reason. Like it's very easy for me to understand as somebody who doesn't even work in PE. It's not that hard. Matt: All right, so let's get into good idea, bad idea. And for context, I have three ideas for you. And you're going to tell me what you think of them. The first one is a Claymore turnaround reality show. Now I know you already have a website going, so this might be able to go on there. And the thought is that it's a docu-series following you and Claymore as you're fixing a broken portfolio company. What are your thoughts? Daniel: Horrific idea. Why? One, well, one, I wouldn't have the time to do that. And just having the discipline of doing that every day and doing it well. Like if you take that as an undertaking, you will want to do it well. Like you wouldn't want to post once a week with a quick update. You would want full insight into a business on how it's growing. So for me, yeah, I would not want to do that at all because I think it would be usually, it would take a lot of time and effort to do that. And I'm not sure the return would be that good. I'm not saying it's a horrific idea for anybody else because people do it, right? People are doing, not a docu-series, but people are doing this on YouTube or the channels right now where they're giving a full insight to their business. And it's just like a fly on the wall. It's entertaining, but I think you've got to be exceptional. You have to be disciplined and have a lot of time to do it. Matt: That makes sense. This next idea is taken from a lot of the insights content that's been going around on LinkedIn right now. Daniel: Yep. Matt: And it's growth report cards for PE companies. So the thought behind this one is you can rate your each portfolio company or a potential target and publish a simple to view report card, whether across profitability, growth, and other metrics you track. Daniel: Well, tell me more. Who, who would, who would produce that? Matt: The PE firm? Yeah, it would be a template that you guys have that you can either put on LinkedIn or share internally. Daniel: Uh, well, what would you... Matt: Like insights, but for private equity. Daniel: Well, you can't. That's why it's private. You're locked down. You're not, you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to share company financials on uh privately held businesses like that. Daniel: If you're a private equity firm uh it's against the law. So in that case, it's a terrible idea. Matt: Is that a legal requirement? Daniel: Yeah. Matt: Really? Huh. So, like, if my small business, my electrician shop is owned by a private equity firm, the private equity firm can't be like, oh, this company made me three times my investment and made $100,000 in profit last year or something like that. Daniel: No, you're locked down. You can't do it. Matt: Wow. You should, look, there should be sharing there's other growth metrics they can share. Daniel: They can never show financials about the business. Matt: Uh, yeah, that's one of the, one of the regulations in PE. My last one, again, as someone who's totally new to private equity, this might exist. There's some iteration of it, but it's, well, I've, I've got two ideas of this. One of them is a dating app for private equity firms and companies where you can swipe based on metrics because I don't know, like, how are most private equity firms finding the companies they invest in? This might be more of an open-ended question because I honestly have no clue. Daniel: Well, it's harder, it depends on the fund size. It depends on uh the strategy of the fund. i.e. if you are a small business fund or if you are a growth fund, then you're more, you're hunting a lot more. So you're trying to find these companies. Typically, these companies have never had institutional capital before. So you're finding the founders and you're communicating the founders and you're, you're seeing there's any interest in selling all or part of their business. If you are, if you are a big fund and you're putting a lot of money to work, typically, it's the investment banks bringing these opportunities. I mean, sorry. Matt: So, yeah, so I just think about that like a Tinder for business. Daniel: Yeah, I like the idea in uh I like the concept, but actually just getting the data to do something like that would be tough. That's one of the hardest things is sourcing businesses and sourcing opportunities. Matt: If sourcing businesses is so hard and that's one of the biggest problems for private equity. I don't know why more people wouldn't make content because that's, to me, the easiest way to get not only in higher chances of your DM being responded to, but also of inbound deals coming to you. I'm sure you get a bunch of opportunities to invest in companies because they want you over some Joe Schmo who has no followers on LinkedIn and can't help them. Daniel: Well, that's the other thing that's broken in PE and I think I posted about this is, you know, they, they, they took the word private too far. And if you look at 99% of private equity websites, it's a pitch book for LPs. That's it. And they're pretty boring, most of the sites. You know, on the first, on the post you pulled up earlier when I talked about if I was building a PE firm from scratch, I would do several things completely different. The brand and the transparency would be different. So you're exactly right. Daniel: You know, new firms, new PE firms should build brands where they're transparent and they're talking about their founders and they're showing every metric they can and they're building trust because the majority of the, the majority of the time, you know, when a, when a business comes up for sale, if it's big enough, it'll be handled by an investment bank. Right? The investment bank will produce the SIM, which is the, essentially the pitch deck, and then they'll take it to the PE firms that, that they think will be most likely to buy this business. And then the founder will meet these PE firms and they'll have never heard of them. Right? If you ask a founder what PE firms they know, they might name the top five. They might say I've heard of KKR, Blackstone, and Carlyle and Apollo. Very unlikely those funds are going to buy the business. So they'll meet five PE firms they've never heard of. If you are a PE firm, you've already built a brand. One, much better if the founder goes, oh, I've heard of those guys. I've heard of those guys because they post so much on LinkedIn and they've got a great website and they post their founder stories. And I feel like I know them and I feel I can trust them already because they're just transparent and know the PE firm is. So I think there's a big benefit to that. And it's better to attract than chase. So you also get a benefit there because if you do so well at building awareness and building a brand for the PE firm, then even before an investment bank approaches a company, hopefully you get companies going, okay, I'm thinking about selling. Oh, I've heard about these guys because I've seen their content and they seem trustworthy. I'll just email them and ask them what's the process and would they be interested in buying me? So that was a very long-winded answer to actually agree with you and say, yes, if a PE firm thought a lot harder about how they brand themselves and how they go to market with marketing and LinkedIn and all the various channels at their disposal, they could make themselves way more attractive to founders than they do at the moment. Matt: I think we have the title of this YouTube video, Matt. Why Every PE Firm Needs to Be on LinkedIn in 2026. There we go. One more question, Lee, because I can't control myself. Daniel: Go for it. Matt: Is when people talk about investment banking, I think a lot of people think of bank tellers or traditional banking services. From my understanding, investment banking, and Matt, you can do a better job at explaining this, but has really nothing to do with the traditional financial system. You are just a middleman between a private equity firm who wants to buy the company and the actual company who is looking to sell. So why is it called investment banking? This might be a better, like, I don't get it. Because you're making, you're selling something. You're making an investment. It's like a, I guess, yeah, you're selling capital sometimes. Daniel: It's like, you're connecting buyers and sellers. It's like being a real estate agent. You're connecting buyers and sellers. And if you're a real estate agent and you're selling a house, you want to make that house as attractive as possible. And you pull all the documents together and all the legal documents, and you try and get the highest price possible. The investment bank has the same job. They try and sell a business. They make that business look as attractive as possible. They pull the pitch decks together and the SIMs and everything they need to and they try and get the highest price possible. Same deal. They're middlemen. Matt: That makes sense. Maybe, yeah. Daniel: No, that that makes total sense. Is there anything else, Lee, that we didn't hit on that you want to mention to the audience before we wrap up? Matt: I don't think so. I think you've been pretty thorough. Maybe let's talk about your posting strategy of annoying everybody. It's working pretty well so far. What is the strategy for don't do this and how far are you going to take it? Daniel: You could take it a long way. I think I'm going to take it pretty far. I thought my best post so far, Lee, was I just had one. And, you know, I'm someone who posts two to three times a day. I mean, it's tough with my day job. Matt: But where I took that because Sam Parr reposted my post where I said stop doing this. You saw the one where I said stop, stop doing this. Daniel: Yeah. I thought that was the, I thought that was a great bit. But I am going to keep doing more of those because it's a proven format. So it works. Matt: Exactly! Like, Ashton Hall, you know that guy, Lee, who posts his get ready with me. He's like 5 a.m. with Saratoga water. Daniel: I don't, but go on. Matt: So there's this guy who posts his routines, and he's like drinking Saratoga water every day, putting his face in an ice bath at 3 a.m., all this stuff. And he's been doing it, and now he's got like 10 million followers doing the same thing. So like, you know, if this is gonna be a proven format, I might as well try it until it burns out. Keep doing it. It's all about test and learn. Daniel: What have you guys, I should throw a question back at you, because you're obviously, it's your business, you're way deeper in LinkedIn than I am. So what have you learned? Like three things that work, three things like a no-brainers everyone should do on LinkedIn. Matt, maybe you go first. Matt: I feel like comments, time to think. I feel like comments we should be talking about, but that's a no-brainer for sure. A hundred percent. If you're not commenting, what are you doing? It's a social network for a reason. It's not just to post and then run away. So I think for me, comments is huge. Also, because I post a lot for clients as well, and we've tested lots of different formats. Daniel: Yep. Matt: I agree with you that video, nobody across all of my clients has seen significant impressions from video, so we've kind of avoided that, to be honest. Focusing a lot more on just like pure text or text with image. Daniel: What seems to work really well is if you do have case studies, posting case studies where the customer, the client, or whoever you're working with is saying really good things about you. Those posts, I think, are the most effective for driving leads. So it may not get as many impressions, but if you're running, say, a coaching business, for example, and you post a lot of screenshots from your internal community, people's successes, wins, things like that. Those we've been seeing a lot of success with a couple of my clients. So I think for you, obviously, your goal is not to sell Claymore that directly, but that is something that we've noticed has worked really well. And then in terms of like top of funnel, I think Lee, you're very good at this already, but piggybacking off of trending news. Yeah. Those types of posts tend to do very well. So today's, you know, Netflix, Warner Brothers acquisition, that would be a really great post to make, you know, give your real personal take on it. That would probably perform quite well. And then also anything that's a little bit spicy or controversial, provocative always tends to get a lot of engagement. How do you, what are your deliverables for clients? Because you're building an interesting business yourself, building an agency for LinkedIn. But I think the issue you have, and you may tell me I'm wrong, is attribution. Because any time I employ an agency, a digital agency, I'm very clear that I don't care about impressions or engagement. At the end of the day, I'm paying you to make me more money. Unless you can show me how you're making more money, we've got an issue. And digital agencies don't like that. Why? Because they're normally talking about two different vanity metrics and the engagement we've got you, and isn't it great? And it's like, well, no, it's not. I pay you $20,000 a month. How much money am I making from this? And they've got attribution and don't like to tell you and don't want to tell you. On LinkedIn, there's none of that attribution. So what are you promising clients? It's just impressions and engagement? Matt: First of all, that's fascinating, Lee. I need to be charging higher prices if they're charging you $20,000 a month. Second of all, one of the things, and completely agree with you, the attribution is really important to folks because they don't care if we're getting impressions if none of that is leading to actual sales calls being booked. So every month with all of my clients, we've got a very built out dashboard for them with most of the important metrics. So for them, it's usually how many sales calls did we get inbound that were qualified? And how many of those actually ended up resulting in closed deals? How do they attribute that to LinkedIn? They cannot attribute it directly to posts, but they do have basically a setter in their LinkedIn DM. Daniel: So if someone whose only job is to message leads as they come in, and that person keeps track of how many calls they're actually getting booked. So it is possible to measure attribution there, but you won't know which post that person came in from or if they saw two or three posts before that. Matt: Okay, that's pretty clear. But I do agree with you. It's a common problem with the space. And if someone's figured it out, I would love to pick their brain. Otherwise, it's something that definitely keeps me up at night. Daniel: Well, that's your opportunity. I don't think Lee will ever get to a place where you can a hundred percent, like have return. Because with, you know, the science says that it takes seven times for someone to see something before they actually purchase it. Matt: Now it is a little bit different when you're talking about something like spending money with Matt on ghostwriting. That's more of a B2B thing, a little higher ticket and different thing. But if you're taking the example of home services, it's probably going to take a few clicks. So especially when you're on LinkedIn or even on Google, you can't, it's hard to attribute it just to one post. Like one of our previous guests said for every dollar he's spending and like the return they get, he just assumes 50% of it is not like, like there's just a sort of dark funnel because it could have been like, they could have just gotten paid or like, okay, I want to do it this day. And it's hard to always a hundred percent tracking. Daniel: A hundred percent is hard. I agree. Even on a full marketing mix, your top of funnel, it's impossible, but the digital you can attribute, there are still some gray areas in digital to attribute. Like, like social where you can see the direct response you get from social, but you also know you're getting a big kicker from the branding effect of social. And they might see you on social and they might call your number a week later and you've got no way to attribute that. Matt: But you still should attribute it as much as you can. Like you should be thinking about every week, I can attribute 60% of this. Like how can I get to 65% and attribute this? Because that's, I mean, that's your, that's your opportunity. If you think if you can build something to do that, to piggyback on LinkedIn or some kind of other platform to do that, that will put you head and shoulders above competition. If you can actually tell people, no, we've got good attribution here. We can tell you exactly how much money we're going to make you. Daniel: Do the companies that you work with Lee at Claymore or even before Claymore, like do any of them implement content into their marketing strategy or organic, or is it mostly on like the paid side? Matt: The, well, SEO is big. SEO is a hygiene factor. Everyone should be doing SEO in terms of organic, but granted that's not strictly content. You know, a lot of them actually don't do a great deal. They might do organic on meta on Facebook and Insta. That's really it. Matt: They're not doing a lot of organic on LinkedIn or not doing a lot of organic on other platforms. Huh. It's fascinating. Because the ROI is low, right? When I, when I first started working at Facebook, organic was massive. You were getting a lot of ROI from organic, but then once these platforms like LinkedIn is doing, and I'm sure will carry on doing, we'll figure out a way to make you pay for it. Like why, why would you give someone free, free, a big free voice and free impressions if we can figure out how we make them pay for it. And that's got to what, I mean, I'm sure LinkedIn, that will happen at some point. Like the organic reach. And again, that's, it's, it's down the black box of LinkedIn. I'd love to see some metrics on this to show like organic reach. Is that declining over time? Because if it goes the way of the other platforms, that's absolutely happened. Google organic declined over time. Insta organic, Facebook organic, all declined over time. They'll always find a way to make you pay for it. As long as you can measure what the ROI from that investment is, that's absolutely fine. Like Google PPC, if that's profitable, we'll pay for that all day long. But of course that's just not there on LinkedIn yet. Daniel: Yeah. No, but I completely agree. You guys are doing it. Keep doing it. I think it's a super interesting space. And there were not many insights, and we're all guessing around this, right? But I throw around these conversations and conversations with other guests that you have. But again, it's an opportunity. If you figure out ways to solidify these insights even more and figure out what data you can collect to give people even more facts about performance on LinkedIn and how you do improve your performance, I think it can be gold. Matt: That's the plan. Get all the insights, talk to all the people, and hopefully we'll figure something out. Have a $10 million podcast. Daniel: Thanks for coming on the show, Lee. Matt: Pleasure. Good talking to you both.