The LinkedIn Advice Ivy League Schools Won't Give

Transcription

Matt: Brown University is an Ivy League school with a 5.2% acceptance rate. The tuition is $85,000 a year, yet they don't have a class on LinkedIn. I know this because I graduated from Brown in the spring and so did Delaney. In this Creator Help Hotline episode, a name which I still need to work on, we're going to transform Delaney's LinkedIn profile in six key categories to turn it from good to great, just like her Ivy League education. Welcome, Delaney. Daniel: Thanks, Daniel. Pleasure to be with you today. Matt: Okay, so to start us off, can you give the audience a background on a little bit more about you and yeah, just tell us more about yourself. Daniel: Absolutely. So I just graduated from Brown. I did my master's at the Gill. I am jumping over from the professional athlete space into a little venture that's in the water tech industry. And really for me, this is my first stab at entrepreneurship and I've loved being in this space of, you know, I've followed Daniel with place to place, but the whole, you know, the whole goal for me is to think about water and think about the water future. So I'm building a company called Value Stream Capital. And the whole premise of the company is to finance and operate decentralized water systems that will allow midsize industries to treat and reuse water sort of directly on site. Instead of, you know, instead of sending it to a centralized treatment plant that's miles away or hauling water and trucking it. So this model sort of brings technology and capital directly to the source, and it allows, you know, industry to not only run more efficiently and deploy faster, but also it eliminates the need for capex. So companies can really pay for performance and not ownership. And that's the niche that I've been focusing on. It's what I did my master's in and I'm excited to, you know, transition from being a pro athlete into, you know, another space. That's just as demanding. Matt: That's really cool and fascinating. Can you give for the audience's benefit, one example of what you want to do with value streams? Like let's, I guess, use my example of hometown in Louisville, Kentucky. How can value streams add the value? Daniel: Totally. Let's think of, do you have, do you know a brewery near you, Daniel? Anyone that's down the street or close by? Matt: Yes, 1020, like a, like a beer brewery. Daniel: Okay. Yep. Let's use the example of 1020. Matt: Okay, lovely. So we would go to 1020. We'd ask them all about their wastewater. You know, we'd learn the makeup of the water. We'd ask them for water samples, send that to a lab and figure out what's valuable in their wastewater stream. A lot of the time it's gonna be water. You know, for a brewery, it could be ethanol or there could be other components of the stream that maybe could be circularly recycled back into the industry. So instead of 1020 hauling all of their water to be treated offsite, we would basically find a tech partner and build a turnkey system that allows them to get value out of their wastewater stream. Daniel: And for a company that's a little bit smaller, that maybe has a permit that there could be a capacity bottleneck that they face. So by recycling water and having water autonomy through a decentralized unit, they could increase production, so on and so forth. That's kind of the whole goal of decentralized water is to allow for industries that are seeing wastewater as a liability and a burden to rethink it and actually find value in it and keep it onsite, especially in a future where there could be water scarcity. Matt: That's pretty cool. It reminds me of two things. One, my dad used to work in the hotel industry. And at his hotel, they used to take the cooking oil and use that as fuel for one of the founder's cars, which is pretty cool. And also it reminded me of something in the bourbon industry, actually, there is a big waste product of a byproduct of the making the bourbon of the mash. And typically companies will pay to have that shipped out of the bourbon factory or distillery. So is the current status quo that people are paying for their wastewater to be shipped out? Daniel: From what I understand, especially if they're a midsized or smaller industry that doesn't have the capacity to do something or, you know, it doesn't have the capex to install their own wastewater treatment plants, then the other two options would be to haul and, you know, or send it to the centralized treatment plants. So I would say that if you're talking on a large scale, like maybe a huge data center or a huge mining facility, they're going to have that all locked in just for regulation and permitting. But smaller industry is really kind of the sweet spot that I'm looking at where they don't have the capex to, you know, install and deploy one of these systems themselves. But a partner like Value Stream could come in and turn that into an operating model with a tech partner and deploy. Matt: Very cool. And I love learning more about this niche. Okay, so what we're going to do now is now that I know a little bit more about Value Stream and hopefully the audience does too, we want to get into why you want to post more on LinkedIn and your goals. And then as you can see on the screen here, we're going to dive through six things that will hopefully upgrade your profile and give some tips that the audience can learn from. Does that sound good? Daniel: Sounds great. Matt: So starting with your goals for LinkedIn, your personal, your banner looks great, but what is your goal for posting on LinkedIn? Daniel: This is a great question. I thought about it a little bit, but I... Matt: You can workshop it out too if you want. Daniel: Yeah, yeah. You know, I would love to workshop it. I think off the bat, kind of just build trust around the brand. That comes number one. I think building a community of people who believe in decentralized wastewater, that would be another goal. And then I think the other, the other main thing that I'd want to hit on is using it as a space to find investors and potential partners. Matt: So I kind of see this in two areas. We have kind of the, maybe we can call it the advocacy side. Well, and then the non-advocacy side. I love to be mutually exclusive with my categories here. I mean, I mean, actually, no. I really think what this is, is we have business goals and non-business goals. On the business side, we want to find business for Value Stream, whether it's investors, whether it's new clients, et cetera. On the non-business side, we want to build people passionate about it, other community initiatives, show the impact, et cetera. What do you think about that? Non-business and business? Yeah, sounds fantastic. Did I miss any little sub points on here? I feel like non-business and business is pretty straightforward, but the reason I think a goal is so important is because, and honestly, we may want to figure out a tangible goal if possible, because I was just doing this with my LinkedIn, because when you're following someone, Delaney, you kind of want to know their niche, their mission and their goal. So for you, your niche is going to be this wastewater. And I think the mission, from my understanding, is to help reduce wastewater and make it valuable and reduce just waste in general. That's a pretty cool mission to make the world a better place. And, but then the goal, which I think a lot of the best content creators have is, like a goal, I mean, we want to follow you Delaney on a journey. So on the journey to maybe removing a million gallons of wastewater or 10 million, or I don't know what's feasible, but just to give some other examples, for Airac, he's boxing a celebrity after every 1 million subscribers. So that's a reason to hit the subscribe button. A lot of people right now are building a billion dollar business like John Hu of Stand. And we kind of want to figure that out for you too. So that's something, what do you think about that? Do you have any ideas? Daniel: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think off the top of my mind when I've talked to people about the idea and investors, I've always led with this saying that I don't believe in the word wastewater. I think that when we, you know, I've, I've been someone who's kind of in the semantics and I think when we call wastewater wastewater, we end up treating it like waste. And so the whole idea is sort of disrupting that instead of calling wastewater wastewater, calling it a value stream, you know, a stream that is full of value and energy and minerals and nutrients. And then of course, water itself. So when I think about maybe a goal, I think maybe it could be in line with the idea of either with the idea of, you know, disrupting this wastewater paradigm or even, you know, thinking about deploying, you know, you know, projects deployed with potential partners in the space. I think I'm still a little bit lost on the LinkedIn front of where, you know, what would incentivize somebody to want to follow on this journey. That part, I think I need to think a little bit harder about. Daniel: So I think, you know, I'm thinking out loud here, but I think the, I don't believe in the word wastewater is great. Like that may even be a great personal title here because I don't believe in the word wastewater gets someone to click because I'm thinking, hmm, what is wastewater or something like that? I'm honestly just gonna move this here for when we go to that. Matt: And for the goal, I think a good place to start might be something like, you know, building a hundred value streams or maybe a thousand. We can shoot big. And the reason numbers are great is I'm gonna move what I wrote earlier are your two categories in the post strategy section. So I think this is a good goal for now. And I think we should move on to the personal title. And we might have honestly already done it. Now, the reason, I'll show you why I don't like your current personal title is because if you see here, it gets cut off. So value stream, no one knows what value stream is. You know, this has been started in September 2025. And then brown university graduate, that might be, it's a little long. It gets cut off. Daniel: Totally. I didn't even know it got cut off. That's good to see. Matt: So the key here is you have to have it below at or below 63 characters. So I'm just going to Google a character counter here. That's for another one. So I don't believe in the word wastewater is 38. So we have a little bit more room to play with if you want. Do you have any other ideas for your personal title? Any other things you'd want to touch? Daniel: Would you put title in there, Daniel? Like, would it be valuable to put like founder of ValueStream Capital or is that too redundant? Matt: The reason I don't like founder of ValueStream Capital, and not that it isn't good to say you're a founder, but the reality is when most people are scrolling LinkedIn, they're going to see, so like if I were to comment on something, and this is hilarious. I love this hook. Oh, great post here. If you were to look at like this person, you're looking at their name and their title. So you see me, LinkedIn's in Xarticle. That in a way is the second hook. But if someone says founder at ValueStream and they don't know what ValueStream is, they're probably not going to assume it's water or know the mission you're on. If you make a bold statement like this, I think they're more likely to click on your profile. Daniel: Totally. Totally. That's why I like it more. Matt: Yeah. And I think it's a bit, like you said, it's a bit, I'm trying to think of the right word for it. It's on the tip of my tongue. Maybe controversial. You know, someone might want to explore or dive a little deeper. Daniel: Yeah. Matt: The word you're looking for is it evokes more emotion. And that's kind of my goal. That's actually what I studied at Brown. And that's a goal with a lot of the stuff you want to evoke the emotion or else people, because it sounds AI generated if it doesn't evoke emotion. So this might be a good personal title then. Daniel: I'm trying to think of how I could trim it, but I think it's pretty clear. Like, I don't believe in the word wastewater. We can always edit it later. As you're watching this, it may have changed a little bit. So you can check Delaney's profile and see. Before we move to banner image, Delaney, is my audio sounding pretty crisp and good? Matt: Yeah, it's crystal clear. I'd be mom. You sound good. No, no, no, no. You honestly sound perfect. I just sometimes get self-conscious on my audio and I'm going to cut this out anyways, but I just want to make sure I was good. Daniel: Oh, you sound fantastic. It's clear. It's super crisp. Okay. Okay, good. Um, I've had many times before where it hasn't been. So that's okay. Okay, so moving on now, we've got the personal title straightened out. We're gonna move on to the banner image and profile photo. We'll start with the banner image. And for me, this is a little hard to read, to be honest. And I'm not totally sure what value streams are. So I'm trying to think about how we can, we really want to tell a story with your profile and have that next, the only step after reading your profile is to follow you and help you achieve your goal and building a thousand value streams. So once we hook them in with, I don't believe in the word wastewater, when we look at the banner image, I think we need to define wastewater. Either define wastewater or value stream. What do you think? Do you kind of see where, where my head's at? Matt: Totally. I think you're right that people don't know what a value stream is yet. And that's the, that's the story that we want to take them or the journey that we want to take them on is, is, um, that understanding. Also, I'm thinking about the word turning because it kind of, it kind of, I think, is into the overarching goal of building the value streams. I mean, again, would it be too early to put the goal as the banner? Have you seen anyone do that sort of strategy? Daniel: I've seen people put the goal in their banner, but I think they're still going to be confused. I think what we should do, I'll, I'm gonna show, sorry, my tabs are all over the place and I forget sometimes where I put what, which is definitely not. Uh, advisable. And you're definitely more organized than me and I can't even get this to go to that half of the screen. I don't know where my Figma tabs went. I also, Daniel, I have kind of a one-liner that I built out with an advisor that maybe we could Matt: Let's hear it. I mean, it's, it's again, it's kind of obscure and I think that it's not completely perfect and conveying exactly what value stream is, but it does touch on maybe two of the points that, that are important to the company. So it's just value stream capital is transforming industrial wastewater through decentralized systems and performance-based financing. Might be too wordy, but that's kind of a one-liner that I've that I've been doing for a lot of outreach. It's different than LinkedIn, but maybe you have thoughts. Daniel: That sounds a little wordy. Here's what I wanted. Okay. So here's my LinkedIn banner. And can you see this? Okay. So you were seeing my entire thing. Perfect. And what's, we can honestly just try these two sentences for you right now. So like this is mine that I should just change mine to. So you can kind of get a sense like two action words. And I like the background too. Like what's the current branding of value stream? Let's see. Pretty basic. This was done, was done all in-house. So it's definitely not, not perfect, but took a stab at it. Let's, let's take this image of water, put it in the background there. We can make this text, add more of a drop shadow. Maybe make the drop shadow black. Matt: And then we could try making the text black, though. No, I don't like that as much. I don't know. I kind of like this more. What do you think? Because you can see the text better than on the, on that. Because the problem is it's white and black. And when it's white and black, you can't see white or black text well. So we got to think of two and it's hard to think of this live right now. Any ideas? Daniel: Yeah, I think we could, you know, I think that if we wanted to kind of follow the same structure as follow for like the insights, would you mind Daniel flipping back to your guys' Okay, follow for actionable takeaways to grow on LinkedIn. I, I see two options. I think we can go the wastewater is and then join as we build, as we build 1000 value streams across the world. I think that might be a good one. Because I don't believe in the word wastewater. It takes us here. Wastewater is formerly known as, and then you can find that. Wastewater is formerly known as join me as we build a thousand value streams across the world. That sounds pretty legit. What do you think? Matt: Yeah. And I, I use, it's utilizing the space well too. You know, other, I think that, that the, I love looking at LinkedIn banners. It's just something that if somebody's curated it and there's been so many creative ones that I've seen, I love the creativity and I, I think there, maybe you can speak more to this underutilized. I know some people have no banner, but, but just transforming it into something that, that works harder and works better for the company is fantastic. And I like the approach of two lines, kind of laying out the goal and then also kind of describing wastewater, which is key to understanding, you know, the value of value stream. Daniel: Perfect. I'll send this to you. And if anyone in the comments wants this, I can put a link to this, just Figma component in the description. The reason it needs to be at this specific space in the Figma is because on mobile, it will cut itself off because of your profile photo. I honestly should put a circle there, but so it's, you know, imagine your profile photo is essentially like right here. So then, and then on mobile, it condenses even more. So it's harder to see, but that looks good. We got banner image done. Matt: Profile photo, I think it also looks good. The, when we had Jack Porter on the pod a few weeks ago, although I don't know if it's out. It'll probably be out next week, but he was talking about how your profile photo really is almost your company's branding because you're doing most of your posting through your personal page because company pages don't do that well. So your profile photo should be something that you're fine having for the next two years because that's how people are really gonna recognize you by. Just so you know, to, to let you know. Daniel: Totally. So don't rotate it out. I wouldn't rotate it out a lot because people are gonna forget who you are because you're not doing a lot of video content on LinkedIn. So that profile photo is really the only human element where the audience can I'm on a journey with Matt, keeps on doing that, to build a $10 million podcast on Connection Accepted. We interview LinkedIn creators. So that doesn't have, I guess, the most, but that's the four things I kind of wanted to say. Tricky. Matt: Breaking it down into four things, because I think if I took some time and took a stab, you know, listing it out could be easier for me if I thought thematically of like parts of my profile that maybe don't convey, you know, maybe there's other elements that I want to bring into the about section that aren't touched upon elsewhere. Daniel: I think that's great. So I think we want to add stuff not on profile already. I mean, we may want to do this after we give you some more time because it's the first one. Maybe it would have been helpful to think about more information before, but, you know, we want to add stuff on the profile that's not there already. And obviously I want to be concise. Matt: And this may be part of the pitch for Value Stream to explain, you know, we've got wastewater defined, but maybe give one tangible example, like you did with the brewery, and just say, and I would also use plain English because people really, in the age of AI, like Stephen Barlow, the Diverce CEO, says typos are back. All these other creators are. And with ChatGPT, we can get more and more formal and the more kind of human element and emotion you can have in your writing, the better. Daniel: So I would even say, like, say we're a brewer in Providence, say we're the Narragansett brewer in Providence, Rhode Island, and then run through that example in the about. That's one idea. And then you end it with the call to action being follow to watch me build a thousand value streams across the world. I like that. Matt: So I would think about a few things you want to add that maybe aren't on your profile. If not, I like just putting a pitch for Value Stream here. If not, and the audience and I will see what you decide later. Daniel: Great. I'll workshop it. But this is a great format. OK, and you can text me, too, when you have that and be like, Daniel, here's a draft. What do you think? And I'll give you my honest thoughts. Matt: Now, moving on to the featured section, you've already got some stuff in your featured section, which is huge. I think a lot of the things that I like to show in the featured section are you want to show some social proof that people already follow you, which I think is, you know, pretty cool showing your Brown University thing. Daniel: And so you want social proof and also give them an understanding of why they're following you and kind of what they're going to get because it gives them a preview. You want to be like a movie trailer where you're showing like some of the good parts of the movie, but not the whole thing, you know. Perfect analogy. Matt: Yeah, and I think it's pretty outdated. Like, you know, I'm not someone who posts frequently on LinkedIn, and that's why this has been so valuable sitting down with you and thinking about strategy, but a lot of it's pretty outdated stuff that I was working on mostly, you know, excited about in my undergrad and even my master's degree. Daniel: So it's still relevant to wastewater because I've always loved, you know, someone who's a huge water nerd. So I've always loved it, but I think I could get, you know, better content and even stuff that's a lot more relevant to, you know, decentralized water, which I truly believe is the future. Matt: I think so too. So, you know, I think it's personally, I would probably remove the two articles because initially when I saw these, I thought it might be you've written them. And now I understand that you didn't, but like, you know, they only have eight likes too, and they don't make it clear what Value Stream is or why someone should want to follow you. It seems a little random to me to have these here. Daniel: Not that they're not good articles and stuff, but I would probably remove those. I like the brown one, especially if it's your most liked one. And then so keep brown one. Matt: And I would probably write, I'm just looking at your other post here. Whoa, this 1200 one, that's quite a post, Delaney. Daniel: Yeah, that was for in the pro rugby space. That one got pretty popular, but it's also an area that I'm super passionate about. Something I wanted to actually speak to you about, Daniel, is how do you see those two identities intersecting in the sense that pro rugby is pretty different than Value Stream Capital. And do you feel like I need to create a niche or do you feel more like it would be better to, you know, post about all the sort of things that, that I guess make up me as a person? Because I've always, you know, I know you have a whoop. I have a whoop fitness and sports and everything, but I don't know if that's the right platform. Maybe that's my personal Instagram or, you know, something like that. Daniel: I've posted about my whoop before and I don't think you should censor yourself at all. I think, like, especially if 1200 people liked this post, that shows you that there are a lot of people that also care about this issue and that, like, want someone to post about it. Daniel: You know, like, 1200 people are going out of the way to say, yes, I agree with you, Delaney. Like, I think that should give you the most validation to post about anything. And the reality is with social media, when you post something, like, to me, this validates that post about being an NCAA athlete and trans athletes is, like, something people want to learn from you about. And the whole point of posting on social media is you want to be known for something, right? Like, you want to be known for ValueStream Capital because you want to get people to know about it so then you can remove a lot of wastewater from the world, which is a really awesome cause. And, you know, giving this trans athletes example, if you post a lot about it, I'm not saying this is 100% what your content should be about. But that will be what you're known for. And that's good. Like, the 1200 likes should validate that this is something that people want to hear from you about. And I feel like I just repeated myself five times. But, like, does that make sense? Matt: Totally. Yeah, and I think a lot of the comments on that post were, you know, keep LinkedIn apolitical or, you know, don't bring political issues onto LinkedIn. But I kept saying, you know, like, LinkedIn and especially me as a person, this is something I believe in. I'm now a pro athlete, so, and I was an NCAA athlete. And I, and I totally disagree with with the idea of keep LinkedIn business or some of the, the comments that I was getting. So I, you know, I got a little fired up in the comment section, but I think I liked, like what you said about not censoring yourself and then also the validation point being particularly important. So what I would do then is I would add this athlete post and I wouldn't be afraid to post more about this. So I'd keep the Brown grad, add the athlete, and then add a value stream because then you're getting your social proof from the athlete post and the brown grad. And then you're also writing about value stream so people can expect what to hear more from you about from not only value stream, but also being an athlete. And maybe you'll post a little more about that. So I think having those two would be a great featured post. In regards to which one to have first, I would probably put value stream first because that one is going to come up big on mobile. That's something that, you know, a little small tweak, but I'd probably put the value stream first because I think that's like the most important goal for your LinkedIn right now. Sounds good. Daniel: Matt, just quickly, sorry to cut you off, three featured, because I know, isn't there unlimited sort of you could put as many, but three are the only ones I'm assuming that show up on the first without scrolling. Matt: Exactly. So three you can have on desktop and then see how it's just like going like that. Just stay in there. And it's really only one you'll see on mobile, but the three is just for desktop. Matt: When you have so many that you need to scroll past like 10, then no one just sees them all. And it's too much content almost. You don't want to give everyone too much of who you are and all of your best things. You kind of want to save some of your best things for them to follow. Because once they hit follow, a lot of your new, like some of your old best content is going to hit their feed as well. Daniel: Oh wow. Okay, great, great. So yeah, that's what I do. I put the value stream post first after we write one. That'll be good. Keep the athlete or add the athlete one to the featured and keep the brown grad one. Moving on to the experience section. Got three firebrands, earthbrands. Great. Value stream fire and professional athlete. Also really cool. I kind of put education experience too. Okay. So I think I'm going to start with education and then go to experience. Matt: The low hanging fruit for the education is this looks like a pretty big blob of text right now as is. And what I would do is I don't even know if I'd do this on mine. If not, I should. So see how like the data flows. Each certificate is one line below. Maybe I should edit mine too. But How many times a week you're practicing or how many hours you're spending, or if you've won a national championship, or what team you play for, how often you're traveling, because I think the audience is probably like me, or at least most people, where they don't know what women's rugby is, what women's professional rugby is, and the time commitment that it takes, and I'm sure it takes a lot of time, and giving us some insight into that would be pretty cool. Daniel: Totally. And I think, too, like you said, the ER is an emerging league. It was actually part of their inaugural season, which was just such a beautiful and amazing experience. I should give them more of a shout out, especially the Boston Banshees. That's who I played for. Matt: Yeah, I would probably give, I'd probably go context on league and the team, then you work in rugby. That's how I'd probably break it down. And I would also use, you know, I take this smart brevity. I call it smart brevity after reading this book. I just totally steal it from them because they do it the best out of everyone else. Just meaning, use a lot of line breaks when you talk and try to be as concise as possible when doing this, because then it'll read much easier than this, because the reality is when someone's reading your profile, they're really skimming. Daniel: For moving to ValueStream Capital, I mean, if you have this post here, it'll be pretty clear what you do and your mission. And then with this one, I think your description can literally be, I'm on a goal to like something on the lines of, I'm on a mission to build a thousand value streams. If you want one near you, email something like that could be a cool one for ValueStream just to keep it easy and close to you. Most people really aren't going to email from this. Matt: They're going to see one of your posts and then connect and maybe message you, but this would be a good one. What do you think? Daniel: Sounds great. I also think too, I like the idea of if you want one near you. That's what we got. We got to get everybody on that. I think the other piece that I was thinking about, Daniel, that I hope you'd have maybe some guidance or insight on. I feel like people might not even know this is a possibility. Like, especially for more mid-size industry that unfortunately has to haul and pay high disposal fees for their wastewater. Maybe they haven't been able to find a financing solution yet or find a provider that will allow them to use in, you know, an OPEX model. So in that sense too, I like the idea of, you know, if you want one near you, if you're a company that maybe this wasn't accessible to you, there's now a possibility. A lot of people are taken out of the conversation because they can't afford to deploy one of these machines themselves or they don't want it on their balance sheet or XYZ. So I like that aspect of it. For example. I think a great post would literally be, or even because I guess I'll dive into the post strategy late, actually. Series. Daniel: Okay. Do you have anything else actually about the experience section before I move on to strategy? Matt: I think great. I think, um, Are you still working at Earth Brands too? Daniel: Yeah, I am. Matt: Okay, Fire. It's fantastic. I, I love it. They're a great company. If you want to, I would also say maybe what you're selling. So for Earth Cups, I'd probably add a sentence on, like, I help sell solo cups that are… I help sell non-plastic anti-plastic cups that are compostable and better for the environment than, I don't know which one it is, red solo cups. Email me to buy some. Amazing. Something like that. Daniel: Okay. You can go through that on your own, but I think that would be cool too if people are seeing it. Lastly on post strategy, and then we'll finally be done, and I'm sorry if this is going much longer than you expected. I think it's helpful to bucket your post strategy, to think of… Well, actually, first, here's the first thing you should do, Delaney. You should write two weeks of posts because it's very hard to just put 30 minutes on your calendar and say, I've got to write LinkedIn posts for 30 minutes today. And you don't want your creativity to be stressed out by, oh, I've just got to get something out. But if you build up a two-week buffer before you start posting every day, then you don't have to worry about it. You know? You're, you can just be relaxed and not have to worry about it, and you'll be more creative because the reality is, this happens to me. I get a hundred, literally a hundred ideas some week of posts. The next week, I might get zero. So having two weeks of posts is going to be good. And then the other part to help you ideate the post is to have buckets of ideas. Daniel: So I think like having business and non-business is helpful, but the best thing to think of are formats. And here's kind of what I mean. So when I was writing a lot of LinkedIn posts, I would say if I were CEO of Chipotle, that was a post that did really well for me. But for you, I think there's a way we can highlight different businesses that have wastewater and what you can do. And this is going to be really hard to do because you don't want to sound too salesy because if you sound too salesy, everyone's going to read. But if you can even try, like if, if I were the CEO of a small plumber in Kentucky, here's what I'd do tomorrow. So you could even try if I, if I were a CEO, you can try that. It might be a good one for you. I'm trying to think what are other format ideas you have or things you would want to write about? Because the goal, Delaney, the goal really is to test like five to 10 serieses, because with a series, you can easily make the next one. And when you make the next one, it'll be better than the first one. You know, because you'll have done it once before. And then you're known for something on social media. And that's exactly what you want. So we want to figure out a format and series that you can test a few of them. So you can then get that, those compound returns of social media through a series. Like a series format is the best thing ever you can do. So that's why it's so important. And that's what we want to figure out. Matt: Totally hear you. I think just this idea of waste to value, I don't know if that could be a particular sort of series, but highlighting all of the potential value that is lost when you haul or dispose of wastewater. So even writing it out kind of in this, if I were a CEO, if I were to pick maybe a, you know, a vodka company, understanding the specifics of their wastewater and even monetizing it, putting, because there's some pretty great studies out there that can figure out per square meter of wastewater, how much monetary value you lose if you dispose of ethanol or yeast or lactate or any of these sort of compounds. There's some great research. So maybe if I incorporated the value part in it too, that could be a way to not proof of concept, but just a way to showcase all that waste that's being lost, that that value that's being lost and just thought of as waste. Daniel: Yeah. I, I want to make sure though, you're not in the overly promotional category. Cause I think that is something that a lot of new people on LinkedIn mess themselves up in. I was actually just talking to, I actually recommend you follow this guy. I'm not related to him, but I just interviewed him and he was fascinating to learn from. And I think, yeah, you should just had a post that I pretty liked that I liked. Yeah. So I honestly would follow everything Noah said because he's a genius. And you know, what he did was he got deep inside the customer's head. Matt: He was connecting with his ideal customers and then sending them messages, became an expert pretty much on pretty much ChatGPT for SEO and then was talking about jobs in the industry and you know, would DM people and also comment on their posts. And honestly, this can be a great strategy for you. Like I would just start connecting with people in the wastewater space or that are your target customers. I think the reason he did not get overly promotional and did so well is because of that not overpromotionalness. And it's probably just going to take practice of posting a lot. And even Noah's missing a format though. I just wish we had a format. That was probably, I honestly don't know where I was going with that thought. I'm trying to think of a format out loud if I were a CEO. Cause like there are a lot of other random things we can do, like, like there's a wastewater epidemic in America. Like that evokes emotion. I'll take out the trash every week, but we don't take out the water. Here's five reasons. I don't know, something like that. I should have thought of some of these before. Sometimes what helps me to think about them is, is in the buckets. Like if we want to build a community and of people passionate about wastewater and we're talking about wastewater, I don't know, are these sparking any series ideas for you? Formats, formats, formats. I think something that I've thought of a little bit about is maybe it's not the right way to think about it, but thinking about the inefficiencies of the centralized system, like why decentralized? And I think even the word, especially in the sort of time that we live in with trillion dollar infrastructure bills, and you could argue maybe a broken infrastructure, infrastructure that's centuries old unburdening that system. I don't know. That's something I think about a lot. I don't know if that's a good series, but just as something to think about when you're thinking about why somebody would want to move away from a centralized system. So I had two more ideas off of that. If you live in X, it can be, you know, it can be in Louisville, it can be in Providence, it can be in Boston, it can be in New York. Your water infrastructure is failing. Like a lot of the, you know, ranked 50 states, here's a map of how they all did. That stuff goes viral because everyone wants to look for their one state or their one city. So you could say, you know, if I live in whatever, and you could literally do this for hundreds of cities across the U.S., your water infrastructure is failing. Here are five reasons why. And then another thing that I thought of is, you know, reason number 678, why we should move away from a centralized system. And then the series idea here would be reason number like 782. And you would just bounce around off of random high numbers. And the joke there would be, you know, there's so many, I can't even keep track. And that may be a funny bit. Daniel: That's actually a really interesting angle, Matt. I think focusing on those inefficiencies and using humor with the high numbers could definitely engage people. Plus, using specific cities makes it very relatable. Keep going with this, it seems like a promising direction! Matt: It's like, oh, what number reason is Delaney gonna do today? I think those generally would be three good series ideas you can test, in addition to other stuff like, you know, there's a wastewater epidemic, we take out the trash, but we don't take out the water. Yeah, those were some of the ideas I had live. Any other ones? Daniel: I think that's a good start. I mean, I'll definitely take the time once we're off air to think about more deeply like what, what I'm gonna look through some of your posts, Matt, because some of them I think are just like, there's, there's an element to them where you want to keep reading. Like you want to click to see more, especially the CEO posts that I love is just a younger person who, I love the ideas that you come up with. So I'll think of some and then I'll text you and if they're worth, you know, mentioning, if they're worth exploring more, then I guess you'll see them on the feed. Matt: No, I can't wait to follow along. And some other general tips before we finish up is I would definitely spend most time on the hook over the rest of the post because the reality is most people when we're scrolling social media subconsciously or not, whether we understand we're doing it subconsciously or not, we're just scrolling. And then if we see something that's interesting, we hit the see more and you have to get the reader's subconscious effort to be like, yeah, I want to hit it. And even more so, the way I like to think about it is, it's midnight, you're about to go to sleep and you're on YouTube and you're scrolling. And then if you see a Mr. Beast video, you're going to stay up the extra 30 minutes. Or if you're in between meetings and you're on Zoom, if you're scrolling LinkedIn, but it's about to hit 12 and you see a post that says X, then you're going to click on it and read it before you start the meeting. And those are kind of the frameworks I like to think of. That's what makes a good hook, you know, it's evoking emotion and it makes you really want to read and hit that see more. So spending a lot of time on the hook, getting a good image is also important. And now that your profile is looking great too, like I can't wait to see what you do with VALVSHAM and on LinkedIn. Of course, keep us posted how things go and let me know if any questions you have along the way. Daniel: Of course. I so appreciate your time. I appreciate you as a person, just as someone who has said, go out there and do it. I've always been a little bit more timid and especially on the social media space. It's not my most comfortable zone. So it will be a growth experiment for me. And then of course, just appreciate you building the strategy out with me. It's so valuable. Matt: You're very kind. And are there any other questions you have about LinkedIn or anything else before we wrap up the inaugural episode of Creator Support? Daniel: Really, I think we covered so much. I have to do my homework. I think it's on me now. Daniel: Go do my homework and, you know, edit the profile and get things pumping. But as of now, I mean, it looks great and I'm just excited. It's super exciting. And I think that, you know, we'll continue to refine and edit, but this is a beautiful start. Matt: Awesome. Well, thanks Delaney for coming on the Creator Help Hotline. If the audience watching this wants to be in a future episode, make sure to enter your email on our newly designed website, connectionaccepted.com. Thank you for watching.