I posted to LinkedIn every day for 6 weeks and added $1.6m of pipeline
Let me tell you exactly what I did.
My marketing’s actually working.
I say “actually” because I am objectively a terrible marketer of my own business.
But I recently committed to LinkedIn as my main channel and posted there everyday. Six weeks later we had $1.6m of new pipeline created.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I need to close some more of these deals for it to be a screaming success, but either way, something is working.
Let me walk you through what I did that finally got me out of TerribleLand.
But first, here’s everything I tried before that failed.
Fail List
Activated my entire agency around social content (in 2021). Big initiative!
Made an extremely detailed content calendar. 5 different times.
Designed custom “content marketing workflows” in Monday, Notion and Google Sheets.
Watched every Chris Walker video. Not dumb at all - just failed to move the needle without action.
Learned how OKRs worked.
Hired an OKR expert.
Set up OKR software.
Read every Dave Gerhardt post. See Chris Walker note above.
Made my team log their OKRs.
(Team sick of OKRs.)
Made a KPI dashboard.
Spreadsheets, a lot of spreadsheets.
Standing content meetings with the team.
Podcast that didn’t work.
Newsletters that didn’t work.
Webinars that almost worked.
Got tired. Real tired. Gave up.
…And after I dusted myself off, here are the things that actually worked.
Success List
Went off and meditated for a month. Got some perspective.
Came back refreshed.
Joined a 5-week course called UNIGNORABLE on April 21.
Posted my hooks (first sentences) in a channel called Hookers and got feedback from a community of “Hookers.”
Tried different content types:
Personal stories. Category creation stories. Gold Front stories. Customer success stories. Kickass work we did stories.
Saw what content performed the best.
Stopped doing stuff my audience didn’t like.
Sent Moeka everything I ever wrote to have her approve it.
And my kids. Drove family crazy.
Asked Moeka to do an “influencer photo shoot” of me and Bosco the Dog.
Got 362,492 impressions in 6 weeks!
Fielded 42 requests for meetings.
Booked a whole bunch of calls. Had to stop doing calls “just to meet and talk.”
(Started asking if requested call involved me making money. Money good - wasting time bad.)
Promised I’d start “building in public.”
Googled “build in public” to figure out what that means.
…which brings us to today.
There’s no magic formula at work here. I simply:
- Learned from the best experts
- Joined a community
- Kept it simple
- Worked my butt off
I have MUCH to learn about growing an audience and my business.
But I gotta remember to take a step back and appreciate the good days, or I never would.
Thanks for being part of my journey.
By the way, this is not a newsletter about me.
It’s a newsletter about you. Don’t believe me? Let me show you.
What do I preach here? Three things.
Find a category you can own.
It can’t just be a better mousetrap. You must have a philosophy behind it.
Use your founder brand to spread the word and gain unfair advantage.
As an example, here’s my category, philosophy and founder brand:
Category: Category design studio
Philosophy behind it: Those that are categorically different win and have more fun.
Founder brand: As seen on LinkedIn, podcast, and Substack.
Okay, okay - that was more stuff about me. I’m getting to the part about you.
Unlike most BS marketing / strategy / design “thought leaders,” you don’t have to just take my word for it.
Because not only do I have a grip of case studies showing how we help startups achieve remarkable results, but more importantly, I practice what I preach.
In public.
Meaning you get to see if I fail miserably or succeed.
And then profit off of me whether I win or lose. And it’s all free.
That’s the part about you.
So. Since this newsletter is about you, let me ask you:
What category will you own?
Maybe you’ve been creating a category for years, like my friends at Uber. Maybe you have no idea.
Either way, if you are bold, and not yet sick of me, hit reply and say the first words come to mind.
And I will shut up and listen to you for a change.
So what’s your category?
loving your newsletter lately, Josh! Keep them coming!