We interviewed the funniest creator on LinkedIn

Transcription

Daniel: I've had people ask me on dates in LinkedIn DM. I've had people- How are you gonna disclose if you got paid to like a tweet or paid to repost a tweet? Should I make 10 different LinkedIn profiles and repost all my stuff in different languages? So that's what MrBeast did. The most fun content is where people can't tell if it's real or not. My mom's friends will tell me that they like my LinkedIn content, which won't happen on TikTok or Twitter or any of those. They think it's comical because they can never imagine posting something like that on there. Matt: You just have to accept that some days you're gonna wake up and not be able to think of a single original funny thought. And then some days you're gonna think of a billion. I need to get out of the woods. I'm really turning into Henry David Thoreau. That normally films the intro, so it's... Welcome to this episode of Connection Accepted. Today I have Kevin Baker with me today, who is arguably one of the funniest people on LinkedIn, in my opinion. Kevin, welcome to the show. Daniel: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me on. I'm pumped. I believe in the show. Let's get right into it. Okay, my background, and a lot of this has to do with LinkedIn. So ever since I was young, I remember growing up, like when I got my first exposure to a laptop, it was shared between all my siblings. And I remember being in first confession in church. And my greatest confession to the priest was that I was hogging the laptop. And he was like, oh dude, it's not that serious. I don't know why I remember that. But I got the laptop and I was just addicted to like making videos. And I would post this stupid stuff on YouTube and then iFunny came around. I started posting the iFunny. And so I was always just posting stupid stuff on the internet. Like for no reason, obviously a little bit for internet clout, but like just something within me. I'm just like, I need to get these ideas out. Fast forward, I go to school, University of Washington, and I'm like, I have no idea what I want to do. I mean, I'm like driven. I don't exactly know what I'm driven towards. Like I still just love like stupid stuff, making people laugh. Am I allowed to swear on here? Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Daniel: Okay, okay. Just like all stupid shit. So then I'm like, okay, I don't know what to do. What do I major in? I'm like, okay, finance. Cause that just sounds good. Like, why not? I feel like you can get a job with finance. So chose that. Then six months into school, get sent home because of COVID. They're like, Hey, everyone go home. I'm at home. I have nothing to do. Everyone's cheating on classes. Like a whole, you know, every class probably takes one minute to cheat and everyone's doing it. So everyone has unlimited free time. My friends are like, dude, you got to get on TikTok. This is when it's just bubbling up. March of 2020, like when it's really going mainstream. They're like, dude, you got to get it, post on it. You'd be hilarious. Just your sense of humor. Daniel: I'm like, fuck it, let's go. I get it. I start posting every day. That becomes my, my COVID thing. And then I got some traction. Got like 50K followers. And I had a, the Sway house or clout house. One of these, like the influencer houses or hype house. One of those, like the management company like reached out to me. They're like, Hey, we want to like sign you as a talent. And of course, talent agencies, they pitch like, you're going to be the next big thing. This and that. And at this point I'm like, man, honestly, I'd rather do like the business side. I'm like, I can actually like leverage this into like something real. Cause as a creator, you can make a ton of money, but you can usually always make more money beyond the business side. So I'm like, I'll sign with you guys. You guys can represent me if I can also intern at the company. And they said, yeah, sure, whatever. And I really didn't do anything for them. And they didn't do anything for me. And I just kept posting. I didn't do a single brand deal. I should have. I was, I was like, I think I way over index on like, on, uh, on like selling out where I'm like, oh, if I do one sponsored post, people are going to think I'm selling out. But now that I've been in the space longer, I'm like, no one thinks that all my favorite creators, they could post three sponsored things a week. And at the end of the day, it's like, I know what they're doing. They're getting their bag. I would do the same thing. Anyways, get that internship. And this is UTA, right? Like this is one of the most clouded talent agencies out there. This is talent X. This is, this was a smaller, smaller agency. Anyways, I, I got the internship there. I parlayed it into working at Sony music for a while in like their college rep program. You know how like Red Bull has like the Red Bull like cars at every campus. I was doing that for Sony music. I'm doing like album releases. Then Jellysmack, which was a, a unicorn company in 2021 when everyone was getting like billions of dollars, like in the creator economy worked for them. Then I'm like, go back to school. Matt: What'd you do for Jellysmack? Daniel: Jellysmack. I was helping them do make like social original shows. So they were developing like productions built for Facebook, Snapchat. So I was just helping them come up with ideas. I was like branding the shows, like how to make it hip, helping find people. And then I went to LA for a little bit during the summer. And, but really, I mean, both, all these jobs were like half real cause they were online during COVID. And I feel like everything during COVID was just like half real. But then reality sets in. I'm a junior in college. I'm like, I gotta actually do something. Like, you know, I'm panicking. I don't know, I don't know what to do. So I'm searching up entertainment. Matt: What do I do in entertainment? I'm still like kind of posting on TikTok and I get an internship at UTA in the mail room, restocking printers, people yelling at you, wearing a suit. And it's all traditional entertainment at this point. Like I was one of very few people who were like, wanted to be in the creator space. Like UTA. Now they're shifting focus. But when I was there, it was like movies, TV, actors, writers, like producers. And I don't watch movies and I don't watch TV. So I stuck out like a sore thumb. I'm like, hey, I want it, you know, I'm bringing up all these YouTubers that nobody knows and like all the acquisitions happening. Daniel: Anyways. Are you posting on TikTok at this time too, still? Matt: No, I kind of, I kind of chilled out at this point. I was more focused on like the business side and like maybe considered starting my own agency or like helping other people scale. Always like a little here and there, like throw out something on TikTok or on like Twitter. Nothing on LinkedIn at this point, besides like new job announcements. Return to UTA full time. And well, actually everyone went on strike. So they called me. They're like, hey, don't come back for six months after you graduate. So I went to Colorado and I worked on a ranch just to get like, get that out of my system. You know, every male is like, oh, I should go to Alaska and like work on a fishing boat. So then I'm like, I went and did that and I'm like, oh man, like that, that ain't it. So I went to UTA and then I'm going to get to the spicy point. I'm at UTA for a while and I start posting on LinkedIn because I'm like, I'm seeing what's going on. I spend all day on LinkedIn. You know, I feel productive scrolling LinkedIn, but I'm like, as everyone sees, it's like most of this stuff is just such slop and like, it's so fun to the most fun content is where people can't tell if it's real or not. Like that is, in my opinion, the greatest content if you can, if you can successfully trick like 20% of people. So I start like testing the waters, like throwing a post out, you know, once every couple of weeks and, uh, they started doing better and better. And then I had one where I said, I acted like I got scammed. Almost everyone has received a text where it's like, hi, this is a CEO. Can you please send me like $500 in gift cards? Like clearly a scam. So I'm like, oh man, it'd be so funny if I like acted like I fell for it. So I posted on LinkedIn and I was like, I got a text from a major CEO. He needed $500 in gift cards. So instead of asking questions, I went straight to the store, bought them, sent it to him. And I, he hasn't said anything yet, but I'm sure he remembers my name. You know, just like acting like I'm bragging about getting scammed. And it, it did pretty well. And then, um, anyways, some people didn't take it very well. And I don't think that people really wanted me posting more I don't know what it is. Matt: So around this time, I see a post by Chris Baki, who's one of the most epic Ultimate X LinkedIn guys. He's sold two companies, his last one to Elon. And he was like, I'm looking for someone to help, help start, or I'm looking for someone to come on to this LinkedIn content agency for startups. It's just, it's just me and the co-founder right now. We're looking for a founding account executive. So of course, I see this and I, uh, use LinkedIn. I literally buy LinkedIn Premium just so I can message him. And I'm like, dude, like founding account executive. I'm definitely not qualified for that, but look at my profile. Like I love LinkedIn content. You got to believe me. We go back and forth, and I end up getting the job. So I, I helped Chris and this guy Jamison Zablos, who's also just epic. I mean, these two are two of the best LinkedIn writers in the game. And to work with them just opened my eyes, not only to like how big this space is, like content writing in general, especially on behalf of like companies, but also like how, how many different lanes there are in great content. Like for me, all my stuff is satirical and stupid, but there is so much legitimately great, non-slop like serious content on LinkedIn that I really didn't realize there was before. And I worked with those guys for six months and then in San Francisco and then recently bailed and started Kevin Baker Industries, AKA Foster Point, pivoting into big tobacco to spill content. But let's start with why you left UTA. Daniel: So you left UTA. Did you not leave until you had the job lined up to be the founding account executive? Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, UTA is, I think for anyone that's interested in like entertainment in general or even like content now, one of the big agencies is the best first job you can possibly have because you go in and it's literally like entourage. Like you're in there with, you're in the mail room with 30 people. You're all suited up. It's intense. You're doing the big work. You're doing, I was going to, I was returning Canada goose jackets to the mall. It's like, bro, is this even real? And anyways, point being, there's like 500 people, 21 to 25 at these companies that you're all meet. I moved to LA with zero friends and immediately I'm, I'm hobnobbing with all these people, getting exposure to, um, really cool things. And then you would come in as assistant and it's less fun than the mail room because you're like, you're just doing someone's expenses, booking their travel, like dealing with all these BS emails. And it's all admin work. I'm horrible at admin work. It was good because it taught me how to grind. I'm sure like any big consulting firm too. It's like, you just need to learn how to work first. Um, and then after a year or so, I kind of knew I was going to dip like anything LinkedIn aside, I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm going to dip. Then once I started posting on LinkedIn and I was like, man, this is like really fun to post this funny stuff. Daniel: And like, you know, it's, it's probably not great to be at a, at a bigger company posting this stuff and reflect on them. Then I was like, yeah, this is it. You know, time's up, but I didn't know what to do. What made you like LinkedIn so much more because you've posted on TikTok, gained millions of views, iFunny, and I'm sure you've experienced with other platforms too. So what led you to like LinkedIn so much? Matt: LinkedIn is just, it's the best because like previous guests have said, there's the most alpha there right now for anyone willing to post entertaining stuff. And I think that alpha is going to last a long time because a lot of people are just too scared to post even funny people. If you work for a big company, you're not going to post because you don't want to get fired. So there's a lot less players in the game right now. And I think going forward, and also people hate the platform so much that like, like nobody hates TikTok this much or Instagram. It's not like you go on there, you're like, like people go on LinkedIn to get fired up. You go on there, you're like, oh my God, this guy like is posting this. So it's so easy to stir the pot on there, which like I said, is the best content out there to post something that gets people fired up, not in like an incendiary way where you're actually like being offensive, but just like posting something that's like the entrepreneur, like parody stuff. Like outsourcing Strava was one of mine. And like you could remix that a billion. You could remix it a billion times. You could do it with like, you know, I created a bot to call my mom or like I had to stop. I had to cut my kids out of the picture to focus on work. Like anything where you're towing the line between like that people are actually posting and like taking it to extreme is fun. And LinkedIn, I can't even put my finger on it. So fun. Also, actually my favorite part of it is that my mom's friends will like, tell me that they like my LinkedIn content, which won't happen on TikTok or Twitter or any of those like your family, friends and like parents, friends are all on there too. And they think it's comical because they can never imagine posting something like that on there. Daniel: Yeah, because when you're on the LinkedIn analytics or profile page, it'll tell you to take three post actions per week, whether it's post or comments. And they know that because most people, they give you three because most people are going to do zero. Matt: Right. And it, it just shows you what a big opportunity there is. Daniel: Absolutely. Yeah. I think I also see with LinkedIn video, I want to start doing the video skits because have you seen that? Is LinkedIn really pushing video? Because I always see the sponsored ads of like LinkedIn video, LinkedIn video, but I I've seen mixed results. All right, let's dive into video. We're honestly bouncing all over the place, but I, I want to talk about videos. Daniel: What we, what Matt and I have seen from video so far, and this is take, well, first I'll say that Matt and I posted some videos. I posted like 40. They weren't great videos, but they're all not, didn't perform well at all. But I put these against David Sendra's. I did an analysis of David Sendra's last 600 posts. He is the founder's podcast guy. I don't know if you follow him. Yep. Yep. He's the goat. And he has like a top 1% video editor. Great videos. But all those videos are bottom 25% for him. None of them are top performers at all. All of his top performers are text plus images. Now the, the videos that I have seen doing well and not, uh, you know, being dinged are by corporate Natalie Ross, those funny videos, and also Varun Rada. So those have been really the only instances where I've seen videos significantly perform. Now I know LinkedIn also has this brand link program where, you know, around 50 creators or so are getting paid to post videos. But I think there's a little like lag in video content for most of us. Like I, I, I don't think it's doing well for most creators. Matt: I have a conspiracy that they're like saying that that video is the new big thing, even if it's not because they probably see that video is much better for like user retention on the platform. Like people are going to spend more time if they're scrolling videos versus text. So I think they're like kind of like just artificially creating this demand that might not actually be there. I was thinking the other day, are there meme pages on LinkedIn like there are on Instagram? Like people that just like brand pages that post aggregated memes. Daniel: I think the closest thing would be if you look up boardroom, these aren't memes, but, but it's a formatted sports business graphic. So I'd say boardroom, click up, post a lot of memes. And of course you have the, the corporate dudes. They post a lot of memes too. Matt: Yeah. But like a dedicated, I don't know, because I mean, I guess the, those would be really the corporate Natalie, the Varuns. Those are the meme pages and your page too. Daniel: Oh man. That's crazy to be up there with those guys. I, I was thinking of like, like so many of these pages on Instagram aren't even making all this stuff they're posting. They're, they're simply aggregating. And I'm wondering if that's where the LinkedIn space is going, where it's like, because it's becoming so socialized now with all the entertainment stuff. And I mentioned this before, but it's like, okay, on Twitter, you see like car crashes, like just insane videos. No one's going to post car crashes on LinkedIn, but like how close will we get to that point where we're getting like, how, how, how far will we stray from serious work content? I wonder. Matt: I mean, people are posted about their marriages on LinkedIn, their personal life. But one of the reasons I think it's the next TikTok is because the use cases are expanding. Daniel: When you're on TikTok, Kevin, it started as middle schoolers dancing and that's why it was so cringe for you to be on the platform at the time. Right. But then it expanded into this juggernaut. I mean, of the platform. And I think, yes, the TikTok 212 days between negotiating, contracting, whatever. I'm not sure it'll be as simple because these are also $100,000 multimillion dollar transactions. So I'm not sure there'll be a a shop like that, but I do think we're going to see more in-house influencers like Peter Walker, who I'm actually editing his episode right now and influencers like him who will be influencing a lot of these large B2B transactions. Right. Right. Yeah, the influencer landscape is so cool. And every company looking for like, I see literal shit poster jobs on LinkedIn right now, which is just nuts. I mean, everything is just becoming less serious, like the whole world. I was thinking about the other day how people used to walk around, like you see the really old pictures of people like in public in like three-piece suits and like those hats and stuff, and everyone would be in like dresses and all dressed up and on airplanes, you would wear suits. And now we've devolved, I mean, not devolved, but everything is just less serious. I mean, now everyone wears joggers and like slides with no socks and you just like sit around and you code and you make a bajillion dollars. Everyone's shitposting. And like with the ramp thing with the Kevin from The Office guy the other day, it's just like, man, nothing is serious anymore. Even the most serious products, you have to be non-serious in marketing because nobody really wants to be serious. I think a lot of the LinkedIn stuff works well because everyone is so performative on there. And deep down, everyone's like, okay, it's not that serious. Like we're like doing an AI tool. Like, so just any content that's a reminder of that, whether it's like a parody or just something stupid, people love. Matt: So with that in mind, and there are all these opportunities out there to either work, you know, PayPal's hiring their content for their CEOs, like $200,000 to $300,000 and all these other companies. Why would you start your own company as opposed to trying to get one of those roles? I think, one, I've always wanted to start my own thing, but a lot of people say that. I think mostly it was, one, I thought I could make more money, but honestly, that's not even... I just needed to spice it up. I'm an antsy guy. Working for someone is really chill. Like you can just collect a paycheck. You don't really have to work as hard as you probably would. You can just, you know, kind of do whatever. I was like, man, I need to spice it up. I mean, what the hell am I doing? I'm like 24. Let's like shake shit up. Like, you know, I could, how long am I going to do this for? I can just have, you know, have these jobs forever. And then now that I've started my own thing, it's fun to like... Daniel: Just, it feels way more like a game. It's like I got to buy my own health insurance. I got, no one's paying me. I got to hustle. I got, you know, I'm doing this content stuff for now. Maybe next year I'm going to go over here, but at the end of the day, I got to chase every check. And then every check feels really good. And it's like, yeah, I made this. And now I'll post whatever the hell I want. No one, no one, I'm not worried about getting fired. I can take a million days off, but I really take zero days off. It's like now it's just me hustling. So it's really like a game. Can you tell the audience a little bit more about your business, if there are any other people involved and what you're doing right now? Matt: Solopreneur right now. Got off the ground like a month and a half ago. Let's go. Really, it's different. I have a couple of clients right now, all different, literally from defense to sports betting. Most of them I can't say too much about, but I just started working with Calci, the prediction market, supporting their growth team. That is really fun. I'm essentially just like making a ton of stupid content for them, coming up with ideas like how we could contract new partners. I have some clients in the B2B space where it's like LinkedIn content. I have some where I'm helping people like structure a podcast. I'm kind of just sitting down with these clients. I charge them a retainer and then I'm like in all their slacks. We have a weekly meeting and then I'm just finding ways to help them grow on social, like in the, in what I think is the smartest way possible. I'm like still deciding what I want to do long-term, like if I want to do like creator marketing on LinkedIn or like whatever else. I'm kind of just feeling it out, which I don't know if, if that's supposed to be the move, but it's fun. Daniel: That's pretty exciting. One of my friends actually works for Elliot Hayes, who has a cow cheese sponsorship too. And his stuff is pretty funny. Matt: Yeah. The prediction markets are crazy, dude. Like cow cheese and poly market are just fighting, like throwing out badges, paying people a ton of money, like sponsoring random people. I do think it's the, I do think it's the truth. And with the prediction market content, I mean, it, the content essentially writes itself. It's like bet on anything. Okay. Then you can make content on literally anything. Daniel: How did you get most of these clients? Are you doing a lot of the outreach to them or are they finding you? Matt: Last company, which was chill. I mean, I told them like, Hey, these people are going to follow me over. They told me no beef, all good. And then the rest of them, Calci reached out to because I saw they were hiring. Like, I think a really smart thing that agencies can do is see like PayPal or see some of these companies who are hiring shit posters or content creators or whatever a million things they call it and reach out and pitch yourself as, Hey, let me fill the gap while you hire. Daniel: Like I want to give you content at a discounted rate just until you hire someone. Cause obviously you just play the game. Obviously hiring someone is the better move, but I just want to help you guys out. You know, it'd be a great logo for me. So I'll do it at a discount. Like you just pitch yourself in the least, like least commitment way possible for them. You say, Hey, I'll give you, let's work together for a month. If you don't see results, I'll give you the money back. No sweat. And then almost always, if you're, if you're good, like they're not going to hire anyone else and they'll just, they'll ramp up with you. They don't want to let you go. And then I had a couple of people come inbound after I started my own thing, like hitting me up, Hey, what's this? Um, and so kind of from all over some word of mouth, but I'm trying to keep it small right now. Cause I don't want to get too in the, I want to think, I want to think really deep into the future on, you know, what to do. Matt: That's totally understandable. How do you balance your content too, when you're working for others as well? I mean, I totally fell off the wagon. I haven't posted in three months, mostly out of fear because the Costco thing did so well, but mainly what's the fear. I'm way too like focused on like everything needs to do better and better. Every post, nothing can flop, which is weird because I tell my clients and I, everyone knows it's a volume game, you know, flopping is flopping. As long as you think it's a great idea, as long as you're not like purpose, you're not putting something out that you like know is going to flop unless it's like a new feature of a product or something that, you know, probably won't get traction. Then you should be posting. But mainly I haven't been posting because I have nowhere to funnel people at all. Like I don't, I don't have any more bandwidth to take on new clients for my personal business. And so if I get 2 million eyeballs on me, what am I supposed to tell them to do? I mean, I could, I can have them follow me. I could put out a newsletter, but ultimately, like I want to funnel them somewhere. Either I need to scale what I'm doing or like the greatest position to be in is have like a B2C product that has zero marginal cost of work for every new customer. Like selling t-shirts. It's like, okay, great. If I have 2 million people seeing my shit, I'm like, Hey, go buy a t-shirt. No skin off my back. If a thousand people buy them, that's, that's something I've been struggling with is like, I just, I have all these ideas in the bank, like a ton of sticky notes. But like, I think about if a post does go viral, then what's it all for? Like, where, where do I put these people as, as for creating content for other people? I think it's important to have clients who are across different spaces. Daniel: Like it's really helped me having like very, very different clients because I can context switch from sports betting into like an AI tool into like a defense company. And they're all so different that it doesn't feel like I'm scooping from the same well. There's just, there's a, I mean, it's tough. Also, you just have to accept that some days you're going to wake up and not be able to think of a single original funny thought. And then some days you're going to think of a billion and there's really no rhyme or reason to it. I've found. I feel Some people just aren't meant to like do this profession. And it's the same with content writing, which is why there's so many agencies. Like if you're not great at it, you should just hire someone. Like I know I'm terrible at accounting, so I hired an accountant because, yeah, I don't really wanna do it. Matt: So that's really a non-answer, but I'm not sure. I think a meme guide could be cool. That makes sense. I'm curious then, so what is your thought process of writing LinkedIn posts from shower thought or wherever you get the idea to eventually hitting post? Daniel: So inspiration just from a million ways. Like I said, walks, showers, real interactions with people. My best ideas actually don't come from scrolling. Like I think it's easy to like see a post that does really well and be like, oh, I can like parlay this or like remix it a little bit. But ultimately the greatest ideas will just come from the randomest places. And I have an idea. I usually have a concept. So Costco one was like, I was, I was in Costco and I just like looked at the food court. And then for some reason I was thinking about coworking spaces just because I saw all these people sitting at these tables. And then I knew the concept was a banger. So then I'm like, okay, I need to sit on it and think about how to say it because you can have a great concept, but if you don't say it right, it's going to flop. Like if I just said, imagine if Costco was a coworking space, it would have, it would have been pretty shitty probably. So then I'm like, okay, I need to like take this as far as I can possibly go. And on LinkedIn, a lot of times it's like, let's just make this a parody post. Like let's act completely serious. And so I started writing and honestly, AI is good for like bouncing ideas off of. It's terrible to be like, hey, is this funny? Like sometimes I'll put jokes in there and I'm like, hey, is this funny? And you cannot rely on that because it's just, it's terrible. But I put in, I said, hey, I'm making a satirical LinkedIn post about Costco being a coworking space. Here are some ideas I have already. Free parking, low like subscription costs, like unlimited amenities. What else should I talk about? And it, and it, I think I asked for a hundred and like two of them were good. Like it was like something about like an eight foot. You can buy an eight foot skeleton or like visible hustle culture. Daniel: Anyways, I took some of those and then put it together similarly with the Strava one. I'm like, okay, everyone's outsourcing everything. Like, and also I would talk to my friends who use Strava and they're just always talking about kudos. Oh, I got kudos. Oh, I got eight likes on my run. I'm, I'm a huge Strava hater. That's beside the point. But I'm like, dude, like everyone is just working out for kudos now. Like exercise is about you feeling good and now people are feeling shitty about themselves because they see other people like doing better workouts and getting more kudos. So it was, it was a dual use of like shitting on Strava and like LinkedIn hustle porn. But I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm just going to outsource my LinkedIn kudos so that, you know, I don't even have to work out. But I also, you know, take all the value out of exercising and like make people feel like at the same time. It's all, I think it's all just drawing parallels between like hinge and sales or like Strava and like hustle culture, like Costco and coworking. Like it's always kind of two like things that aren't correlated, but you just draw this bridge and then that's where the content lives. Matt: And it's hilarious content. You're not sure if you don't want to, but how many impressions does that Costco post have? I mean, literally it is like more like than posts I like Barack Obama, Bill Gates, all the top followed people on LinkedIn when they post, they do not get this much love. I didn't even, let's see. Yeah, that thing. I don't know what happened with that. LinkedIn blessed me. I think they, I think they, I think sometimes LinkedIn just hits a button or I don't know what happens, but that was like, I was at pick up basketball and people would bring up the post with me. I had one person randomly ask if it was me. It was like, it was really weird. Daniel: Okay, let's see. It's to be millions. Okay. Can I take a guess first? I can't even see. I think, I think it was like a little over 2 million. Yeah. I don't know. I think it was two to three, two to 3 million. I don't know how I can't even see it now. I'm washed up on my own. Matt: Oh, okay. 3.1 mil. Wow. LinkedIn is also interesting because three, 3 million views on TikTok would be pretty good. But then 3 million views on LinkedIn is like, Whoa, like, holy shit. Daniel: That's what I was about to say. Like 30,000 likes for a lot of these TikTok influencers is nothing. But on LinkedIn, it's, it's unheard of. Matt: Yeah. Which is, and it's so much harder to get, you know, like I think it's much easier to get 3 million views on TikTok than TikTok. You can kind of get 3 million views by accident. Like if you, if you like are recording and something hella funny happens and you just post it and it's like, you didn't even like mean to put that together. LinkedIn. I think you have to be a lot more like very rarely do people go viral on accident on LinkedIn. Like you have to put a lot more thought into the post, even if it's really stupid. Matt: It actually shocks me because Kevin, do you know how many people are on LinkedIn? I'll give you a little trivia. I did this for, for Jack. Daniel: I'm about to put out the worst guess of all time. I'm going to say 400 million. Matt: 1.2 billion. And knowing that, what percent of the U.S. is on LinkedIn? Daniel: I'll say 20. Matt: You got it exactly right. 20% of the U.S. is on LinkedIn. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. No, I had that wrong. I had that wrong. Sorry. No. 73% of the U.S. is on LinkedIn. 73% of the U.S. has a LinkedIn account. Daniel: Wow. Matt: But maybe it's not but maybe it's and the U.S. makes up only 20% of LinkedIn's total user base. Interesting, right? Daniel: That's crazy. It's sneaky big. Will LinkedIn show my profile to people in other languages, do you think? Matt: I don't think so. I don't think they have translation figured out because I follow some, I've connected with some people in Europe and all their content will be in Spanish and I'm like, well, I can't translate this or understand what this is. Is there a lane then? I mean, should I make like 10 different LinkedIn profiles and repost all my stuff in different languages? Daniel: That's the message. You know, I haven't thought about that, but we might have to try that experiment. Like, what if that would be a good page, extra page. Matt: You would need to connect with people in those countries first or else no one would see the post. But I don't see why it wouldn't work. I mean, good content's good content. Daniel: I agree. That's, that's an interesting idea. It's time to put it together. If you're the CEO of LinkedIn, what, what changes are you making to the platform? I gotta turn my heater off. It's gonna be loud as f**k. Matt: If I'm the CEO of LinkedIn, I am, man. Do you know LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft too? Daniel: Yeah, yeah. So you got to report to Satya Nadella too, so keep that in mind. Matt: If I'm, I would, I would buy 50 AI tools and then add, and then make it LinkedIn.ai instead of LinkedIn.com. I don't know. Be like pushing for video, like, like really pushing for video and people would probably hate me for this, but I might make video the default feed when you open the app. If I'm going full evil social media where I just want people to spend time on the app more, the default. And then also push more entertaining stuff. Daniel: I had a post about having a tape measure at my desk so people can see how tall I am on Zoom. And it was going nuclear. I mean, it got like 1500 likes in like maybe an hour or two and then suddenly completely died. Like, like zero likes, like only likes dribbling in from my friends. And I'm convinced that someone at LinkedIn like clicked a button and was like, Hey, like stop showing this shit. And I don't know if they thought it was mean or something, but I don't know. I don't know how LinkedIn feels about like entertaining stuff. I don't know if you have any insight on that. Matt: I wish I had more insight into it, but I've nothing on this. Yeah. Daniel: I also, here's something I'd change. LinkedIn is so hard to like, to like parse and, and they don't allow like any creator tools. Like the one tool I use creator match, the extension just shut down because LinkedIn was so hard. They don't allow any browser scrapers, which makes sense. The only thing their Thing is like, I've had friends tell me, they're like, dude, your post was hilarious. I would have liked it, but I don't want, like, my friends to see it, or my boss to see it more so. And just like people don't wanna post funny stuff because they're worried about getting your seeing it, the same with engaging. Like, especially for entertaining posts, like am I really gonna like someone's poop joke and then have like the CEO of my company see it? It's like, do you really want your life potential to be like crushed just because you didn't want to live in a city? And you feel almost... Because you didn't use ChatGPT to write your emails. It's like there's so much pressure to like move to San Francisco, work at a startup, move to New York, work at an investment bank. You need to go now, like you're wasting time. You're wasting money. It's like, holy s***. Can everyone just like, it's really not that deep, you know. Like maybe being in San Francisco, you probably do have better job offers, but I wanted to pull the contrarian move while all my friends are moving to New York, mostly for fun, not for jobs, or San Francisco. So I'm seeing if I can live in the middle of nowhere and still make it. So it's an ongoing experiment. I have a six-month lease. So at the end of it, we'll see if I'm a hermit or rich. Matt: How far are you from a grocery store? Daniel: I'm uh, I'm like a 10-minute walk. There's one grocery store here, and luckily I live right by it. Fire. Matt: And you're just in the middle of Washington. Like where in Washington? Daniel: I'm way Pacific Northwest, Orcas Island. If you go like the, you could see Canada. Matt: Is it an actual island? Daniel: Yeah, you gotta take a ferry boat to get here. I'm going off the grid. I'm trying to tap in. I'm trying to see like Henry David Thoreau style if you can pull off the same thing with LinkedIn content. One thing I did want to mention here is that I think thought leadership is gonna be like in the word influencer in the creator marketing space. Like now, when I was at UTA, it's like saying influencer was like ugh. Like before it was like, it's the thing. And then everyone's like, hey, you gotta say creator. I think thought leadership is gonna be a similar thing. I don't know what, I don't know what the next word for it will be, but I, I honestly love the word thought leader. Like, it's just, I don't know, it's epic. Matt: I can so see that because some people really get the ick when you say that, but I feel like there are a lot of memes that can be made about this too. Daniel: Totally. I, I wanted to do one about thought leader exercises, like things you should be doing every day as like a LinkedIn thought leader. Daniel: I have, I have so much stuff in the pike that I, I, I'm gonna put out shortly. I just need to figure out what the hell to like push people to. You can even do like a LinkedIn thought leader, like G-H-O-T leader. Maybe I should do a thought, maybe I should do a satirical course. Like instead of doing a screen... Like Megan Thee Stallion is a thought leader or something. I don't know. I think, I wonder if there's a market, like people sell like social content courses like for real. And like I said, I've thought about doing that, but I wonder if people would buy like a satirical course or a satirical thought leader magazine. Thought leader mag. Matt: Well, see, you're giving me a lot of ideas. I used to be good because the reality is you can't be doing agency work forever, especially when it's yourself and you want to explore the woods in Washington. And a lot of people want to learn from you. Like you really make some of the funniest content on LinkedIn right now. And if you had a guide, like I'm sure Colin and Samir are pulling in millions from their course. I think the key is though, Kevin, and as weird as it sounds, you've got to price it high too because if it's some like free guide, everyone just takes it for granted. Right. But the psychology of once you invest time and money into something, you're going to take it more seriously. Daniel: And I think the newsletter is honestly overdone. Like no one wants another newsletter. Totally. But I think if there was maybe a print magazine could work, bring that back. I think I've seen Creator Mag, this guy Nathan something. Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Liz or Glip or whatever it is. He used to work. Daniel: Yeah, Glaberly. He worked for Colin and Samir. Matt: Exactly. And then he just, he dipped and started Creator Mag. And I bought the first edition and it is sick. Daniel: Is that a physical magazine? Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's super sick. And I think they also do some online stuff, but I think you're right. Like I think maybe doing a, maybe doing a, a serious course, I'll just have to, it's just hard to distill. It's hard to distill some of these processes, even maybe if they seem so random in my head, maybe they're not so random after all. Like I'm sure there must be some structure that I'm running through because the brain doesn't really work like in totally random ways. Daniel: There is. And the reality is you've practiced it posting on iFunny. You've practiced it posting on TikTok and all the previous guests pretty much have the same thing. They have a, a idea bank, essentially, whether it's in the shower or whether it's on a run. Everyone gets ideas somewhere. You can't force creativity, but once you have the idea, you write it down, whether it's in the notes app, whether it's in on paper, a journal, or Henry David Thoreau. And then you get to the writing process. And you know, some people like to use ChatGPT to trim it down. Some people like you might give it an ask AI for more ideas. Daniel: And then once you have the post, you might like, I like to wait five or six hours to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. Right. And then maybe you look at it in the formatting of what it would look like on a LinkedIn post because LinkedIn's post editor stinks. Matt: Totally. And then you do a John Daly says you grip it and rip it. Dude, that looking at it with fresh eyes is so big. I mean, if you have an idea that you really believe in, I'm, I, I usually take like three days and look at it and look at it again. I also have to say, shout out Jason from Popple. That's my guy. I saw you did an epic podcast with him. He's the man. He's, he's now in our intro. He took us to Popple HQ or I love, how did you first meet him? Daniel: I, I met him through, through the last company and then I went to popple HQ in LA, which is his pad right on the beach. Such a cool dude. And I mean, popple is just such an epic company. And he's like, what he does on LinkedIn is amazing, especially with the video stuff. I, I remember I saw a video of him like last week, but he was like talking to his team about why he enjoys working at a startup. And it was the perfect amount of like serious and candid and funny. And, um, yeah, he's just someone I have so much respect for and I'm glad you guys, I mean, your guys's podcast with him. Matt: Thank you. He was having us at the New York HQ, but it was still awesome. And he actually, I don't know if he told you, but he used to have a ghostwriter on LinkedIn. Daniel: Right. I heard, I heard. And, um, I think his, his content, whether it was a ghostwriter or him, has always been, I followed him for a little while and it's, it's always been top notch. So I think he's killing it. And if he's able to do it, I mean, he, he's kept it at such a high level since he left the ghostwriter. I don't, I don't know the exact timeline, but he's, he's clearly got the chops for it. Sometimes I'll talk with people and I'm just like, man, like you have the chops for this. You already post your posts already do well. Like you should not work with me. Like you have the chops, so do it yourself. Like you shouldn't work with an agency if you're already getting good likes. I don't know. You can tell when someone just understands the social landscape. Those type of people should not hire because they have, they already have taste, you know, it's all a taste thing. Matt: The reality is though. I think why so many people want to hire you, Kevin is because posting on social media really is mental warfare. And, you know, I feel like I repeat the same thing like five times, but even the fact that someone who's so gifted at content like yourself, hasn't posted for four months shows how hard it can be mentally. Like it's tough to follow up a post that has 3 million impressions and is one of the biggest posts on LinkedIn. And to get over that mentally, it's, it's tough. Daniel: It is. Yeah, it is. Matt: And it's, it's hard to, it's hard because like creating, if you're like a creative person, putting, putting your original ideas out into the world is one of the like biggest, like as stupid as it sounds, these stupid posts bring me so much happiness, whether they go super viral or they, or they don't, it feels so fulfilling that this idea that I came up with out of nowhere, makes us laugh in the middle of the workday. And that's really cool that like content can do that to people. All right, wait, I'm curious to hear about this creator dating app. Daniel: OK, so to give you context, wait, how'd you hear about that? Was that from Eric or? I found a very leaked confit. Matt: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Wait, was that sorry, I'm I'm, I'm we have probably Kevin, I think, seven or eight episodes that I have not, well, that I'm in the process of editing and posting right now. So all these mishmash. And for context on good idea, bad idea, I try to come up with new ones for each guest. Daniel: I see. And creator dating app, I actually gave that one to Eric way of carrot on Sunday. We were just in LA for him. And uh. Matt: He's, he's an epic guy. I think you just emailed me that you were doing an episode with him and mentioned that the creator dating app was hilarious. Daniel: OK, that was it. OK. I also don't have the best memory. I need to I need to up that. OK, so do you want to hear some of the ideas I had for you? Matt: Let's go. I think something that helps us create content a lot easier is recurring segments. So some of the ideas I had were recurring segments. So one of them was to read and react to DMs and comments you've gotten. I don't think people, because I think there have also been some unhinged things you've gotten, positive and negative. And it may be interesting to have like funny posts or reactions, whether videos or posts, about reacting to those comments. Daniel: Absolutely. That's an amazing idea. I've had people ask me on dates in LinkedIn DM. I've had people tell me insane things that I can't even say here, both good and bad. But I will say I have a post coming out relatively soon about, I'm just gonna, I'll just say it. So my tape. This will be posted for probably like three weeks. My my tape measure post got, got posted on LinkedIn Lunatics and everyone knows if you've ever been posted on LinkedIn Lunatics, you know how honestly hilarious it is. I mean, I was getting cyberbullied. It is just, these people like, I think it was funny for me because I knew it was unserious and these people were calling me a douchebag and an asshole. Anyways, I saved the post and I hired someone on Fiverr to take all of the rudest comments and put them onto a poster and it looks amazing. I have it printed. It's ready to go. I'm going to put it up on my wall and post it because I haven't seen anyone turn LinkedIn Lunatics into a poster. Matt: So great idea. That is hilarious. And I can't wait to see that. Daniel: The next one, and it's even funnier now working at, you're working for Kelsey was a post about betting on the virality of a post. Yeah. Great idea. I mean, you should be able to buy stock in your, in your favorite creators. I've seen someone on X where it's like you can comment on posts and be like tag someone and be like, Hey, 10k views or bet on a metric. Um, people do it on TikTok unofficially, like, oh, investing at 100 views or whatever, but great idea. I mean, you should be, you should be awarded. Matt: Um, the next one is a meme, a meme fund, and it's a venture capital firm that only invests in creators who can prove that they've made at least one viral meme. Would you invest in that? Daniel: I would totally invest in it. I mean, I think the amount of, it is so hard. Like I, I'm, I'm in trying to hire someone full time or contract or part time right now. Finding someone who understands social in general, especially across platforms, like someone who knows what works on LinkedIn and what works on X is so hard. Even on one platform, like finding someone who is just like, can write funny and serious stuff or just social ideas is so difficult. If you had a collection of people who were good, it is infinitely valuable. So I'm investing. Matt: It's, it's funny we just talked about with Alison Chen too, because she's trying to hire someone for Kitsby, her baking studio, and a lot of the people are either too inexperienced or too experienced and too expensive, or they're doing their own thing. And there's not a lot of people in the middle that can help you. Daniel: Totally. I mean, I, I see it as like what, what, what's happening with, with clipping in the consumer space. I mean, starting with live streamers and now it's more so in like consumer product, but where this model of, Hey, this is what I'm promoting. I'm willing to pay X amount per like million views. Now, anyone, any of you guys out there go post about it. If you hit this benchmark, I'll pay you. Like truth is I don't need, I don't care if someone has a degree. I don't care if they're 14, as long as I can legally hire them. Anyone can create content. It doesn't matter if you're like a PhD in math or a middle schooler. Anyone has a, could make funny and like come work with me. I will pay you. I just need to find you. Issue is finding them because people don't write, yeah, I work at Costco, but also I write LinkedIn posts. Like no one says that, you know, it's hard to find people who are naturally good at this stuff, especially when you're hiring like contractor part-time when people could do it in addition to the jobs. Like you just have to spend time scrolling and being like, oh, this random guy who's an accountant is also actually funny. So let me see if he wants to do this. It's madness. Matt: This next one is I'm really just curious to hear your thoughts on it. A lot of these engagement pods have been going around. So, you know, a group chat of 20 people that put their post in a chat and then everyone will like it. Daniel: What are your thoughts generally on these engagement pods that are going around? I'm doing that. I don't care if other people are doing it. No, I'm just kidding. I think it makes sense. I mean, a lot of, a lot of, especially like being behind the scenes, you see how artificial a lot of this organic stuff is, whether it's like a product launch and it's like, oh, there's this product video going up on X and then everything is not what it seems. People, I mean, even like really organic marketing events, like, oh my gosh, look at all these people posting about our organic IRL marketing thing. A lot of it is made up. It's paid for. That's how the game goes though. I mean, like that's how it is. I, I, I would never do it because good ideas will actually naturally become viral always. You can't take a piece of and put money behind it and expect it to do anything. People will see through it. So I'm not about it, but ultimately that's what, that's everything is paid for. Like in the influencer marketing space, the tricky thing is though on X and LinkedIn, almost no one is disclosing it. Like no one, especially on X. Cause how are you going to disclose if you got paid to like a tweet or paid to repost a tweet? You can't like something and add a footnote that says, by the way, they paid me a hundred bucks to like this or hey, by the way, they paid me a hundred bucks to repost it. And you're not going to repost it with a caption saying, Hey, they, you know, this is a sponsored repost. Like that's weird. So it's a, I don't, I don't know if people are gonna get sued for it or what, but it's, it's strange. Matt: That's interesting. I never even thought about that. We never even went into ads either. Personally think that, well, Jason uses a lot of thought leader ads and if I were to use ads on LinkedIn, I would use thought leader ads, but I lean definitely more towards organic content. But what do you think about paid ads generally? Daniel: Paid ads, I think if it's good content, love it. I mean, my philosophy and what, what I've done with some clients is you post organically and a post that strikes organically. That's what you should put budget behind. Like if you post organically and it gets 300 likes, it's like, okay, this is a good piece of content for one reason or another. And if it has anything to do with your business or it's going to get people to click your profile, you should put money behind it. But if you put money behind then it doesn't matter. Like who cares? You know, it's. So if you have a good content, put money behind it. And if it's already tried and true, like proven in the field without money, then do it. And it's the same thing with investors. Like I think investors love investing in people who it's already tried and true. Man, this guy's done it before. This, you know, they already have customers. So clearly it's, this product is working. Let me give them some money. It's the same thing with posts. Daniel: It's like you wouldn't invest in someone who has zero customers and zero traction. Like same thing with posts, put money behind that's already working. You're preaching to the choir. Just because there's an ad label on a post doesn't instantly mean it's going to perform well and drive people to your site. Like, I don't know why a lot of people tend to think that that's not how, like the whole point of advertising is like, if humans were rational, they would just buy whatever's in their best economic interest. But we're emotional creatures. And that's LinkedIn themed like Cards Against Humanity game where you're like stitching together like thought leader posts like apples to apples or like cards against humanity. Like one of these card style games. Matt: I really think that you could do something like a LinkedIn thing and sell like a ton of it. So if you want to do that as a joint venture, we should make it happen. I'm not gonna lie, I would need to do it because we could, I could totally see this just in the office being a game that, because like, you know, in between games, there's like a lounge in an office or at least, you know, my office has one. And you could just play Uno or I could totally see this LinkedIn game fitting in. Thought leader, totally. Yeah, and we make fun of the thought leader, put some of your posts in there. Oh my gosh, I'm laughing. Okay, and the last one was experimenting with some live content and have a LinkedIn comedy club. I didn't think this one out too much, but I don't know, what do you think about a LinkedIn comedy club? Daniel: I think it's good. I mean, any like comedic live streams, I think are hilarious. I've been trying to format a live show correctly because I think live is obviously you can't fake live, but I just, I don't know. I wanted to start with like collabing with other notable people in the space on like skits. And then I did think about, I MCed at an event one time in San Francisco, and I was like, man, there's probably a huge niche for like tech event entertainment. I saw one like actual comedy guy who does like tech comedy. And I think that's a huge, like, I'm sure you guys will do live shows if you haven't already, like at events. And similarly, like, Matt: You should open up. You should open up. If we ever do a live event, you're opening up for us. I hope you know that now. Daniel: I would love that. I want to do a, I guess actually, similarly, I've been talking to, I talked to my old boss about it. He was interested. A live event dedicated to LinkedIn humor, I think is a massive opportunity, especially in San Francisco. If you throw an event, like LinkedIn's not fun, or like, you know, it's not that serious, or like thought leader, like some like parody LinkedIn event, you could get a ton of business to go because like we talked about, business marketing now is not serious. Everyone's having fun. Daniel: If you invite you guys, Jack Rains, my boss, Chris, Varun, corporate Natalie, all these people and have them speak about like their playbook, how they do these things, then also have like just funny skits or stand up sets. I think there's a huge opportunity. Live events are just, I'm horrible at organizing live events, so I need to find someone good, but you guys will need to be there and do a live show too. That would be awesome. Matt: And those are all the good and bad ideas I had, Kevin. All good. I mean, I feel bad for saying none were bad, but honestly, those were fire. And also I need to, I'm going to write down the, the thought leader card game is actually an insane idea. I think that's probably the best idea I had of something like you can make that's, you know, recurring revenue. You don't have to spend more time making it. And those clips genuinely would go viral. I mean, just playing it at the office. Daniel: 100%. And I think I've realized in starting my own venture is that you always want to target people who have a ton of money. I mean, the last thing you want to do is try to sell to people who have no money and people with a lot of money will pay a lot of money for random shit because it's like, why not? You have unlimited money. Matt: And that crowd is typically the SF tech crowd. So if you can cater something towards them, whether it's a service or a product, you're in the right space. And I think the thought leader card game, people will spend 20 bucks on it, 25 bucks just to buy it for their friend because like, why not? Or buy it for the office because why not? Daniel: This is it. You'll need to cut that part out. No, not really. And how many card games do we have in our family drawer that have just never been touched? Exactly. Matt: Exactly. That we're always buying for Thanksgiving. And zero have to do with LinkedIn. Daniel: Until now. And maybe by the four weeks that this will be up because we're a little backlogged, that it will be ready. So the audience can buy it. How many shows do you do a week? Matt: Right now, two, but we built up a backlog first. So I was just editing right now, Peter Walker. We also have Aura, the guy from. Daniel: No, Carta. Okay. Okay. Matt: Yep. Yep. Aura of Ramp. This is embarrassing. I'm not going to get them all, but Marshall Sandman. We were just with Eric Way of Carrot. Daniel: Dude, I'm honored to make the cut. Matt: Dude, of course you're making the cut. I can give you the exact list if you want. How did you find my profile? Was it from the Costco post? Daniel: No, I had first seen the outsourcing Strava one. And then I binged all your content and was like, oh my God, this is hilarious. And sometimes I would literally just go back to your profile if I just need a laugh because it is just so funny. And it's the type of stuff that, that I really find funny too. And then when me and Matt were like, like there needs to be a Colin and Samir of LinkedIn. I was like, dude, of course I'm reaching out to Kevin. I mean, it is a G. Matt: I was literally telling my client earlier how bullish I am on your guys' show for many, many reasons, but I can't, I'm so excited to see where it goes. And I think the name is perfect. You guys have insane guests. I feel like people on, on, on people must be pretty open to like coming on the show too, with how awesome guests you, you guys have. Daniel: Thank you. People are, we're, we're very lucky and excited to, to do this. I, I love this niche too, because LinkedIn is one of those things where it's so cringe to post and do that no one is talking about it because people think it's like something you have to do on your own. But the reality is just like, we're describing your process of making posts. Everyone is doing it the same way. Like you have to come up with an idea, then you have to edit. Then you want to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. Then you're going to post like we're all doing the same thing. We just haven't realized it yet. Matt: Right, right. Yeah. It's epic. If you're ever in Orcas Island, Washington, you know where to find me. I'm in Codded. Daniel: Kevin, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate your time and sharing everything with the audience. Kevin: Love to be here, guys. Hit me up if you want. I don't even know what to provide. I'm hiring, so. And keep supporting the show. Keep your eyes peeled for the thought leader card game coming out in a couple months. It is the new greatest game that you can play with friends, relatives, co-workers, strangers. People are already talking about it. We don't want to say too much yet, but keep your eyes peeled. It'll be linked in the show notes below. Thanks for watching.