How to Explode Your LinkedIn Growth in 2026 with Sam Swirsky

How to Explode Your LinkedIn Growth in 2026 with Sam Swirsky

Kelly Kennedy : There's a hidden side of LinkedIn that only a few people on earth truly understand, and today you're about to meet one of them. He's one of the most experienced, sharpest, and battle-tested minds on the entire platform. The strategist behind some of the biggest names in the creator world. If you have ever wondered how LinkedIn actually works under the hood.

It's time to meet Sam Swirsky. Stick with us. You are not gonna wanna miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development CapitalBD.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now you're expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy : Hello. Welcome to episode 292 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Sam Swirsky. Sam is a trailblazer in the world of LinkedIn strategy, turning a platform into a powerhouse for connection, influence, and growth.

From humble beginnings as a blue collar worker, Sam's discovery of LinkedIn was the catalyst for a remarkable transformation within months of becoming an active creator. He landed a position with Justin Welsh, sparking a meteoric rise in his career. Since then, Sam has worked with some of the biggest names in the business, including Alex and Leila Hormozi, crafting content and strategies that have generated over 50 million views, 200,000 followers and countless opportunities.

His ability to build hyper-engaged communities and create high performing social media posts has earned him the reputation as one of the most innovative and sought after strategists in the game. Sam doesn't just write posts. He creates movements from helping clients dominate the LinkedIn landscape to building the largest free resource guide collection for creators.

His work redefines what is possible in personal and professional branding. Whether you're a creator looking to expand your influence or a business aiming to supercharge your engagement, Sam Swirsky is the strategist who can turn your vision into reality. Sam, it's an honor to have you on the show today, man.

Sam Swirsky: Wow. That is the best intro I have ever received in my entire life by far.

Kelly Kennedy : Oh my goodness. That is the most mistakes I've made with an intro in my entire career so far.

Sam Swirsky: It's because you have to focus on how to pronounce my last name while you're doing it. That's why.

Kelly Kennedy : It's because you're just too epic, man.

I think we need to like tone it back a little bit. I think you need to like not work so hard in 2025.

Sam Swirsky: I'm not, I think I'll work harder. No, no promises. No promises.

Kelly Kennedy : That's okay. People are hearing this in 2026, which is super fun. So I guess we'll know what kind of epic.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah, we'll know by

now. Look, I, I'll tell you, I'm, I'm four and a half years into a 10 year commitment to LinkedIn, so, uh, I'll, I'll still just kind of be in the middle of it in a year and a half.

Kelly Kennedy : Great. That's great. We'll call it, we'll call it the Golden Age. The Golden Age, yeah. Yeah.

Sam Swirsky: Well, I, I think the golden Age was like probably 20 18, 20 19 or for LinkedIn. Yeah. I wish I had got, I didn't get on the platform till like 2020 really being active, but Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy : Well, and you know, we're gonna talk about that today because I've had some pretty incredible people who've made big I impacts on LinkedIn.

And, um, it's kind of amazing 'cause it kind of seemed like just being there at that time at a certain level was enough, as long as you were participating in the way they wanted you to. Like, dude, I've been on LinkedIn since 2013 and I've done like nothing with it until COVID because I didn't know how to use it.

Sam Swirsky: Right. Yeah. I started getting really active, like literally right before COVID. Yeah. And then COVID hit and then it just exploded.

Kelly Kennedy : You know, I've said it on the show a lot because I've talked to a lot of people who are like, oh, well, do I really need a LinkedIn? Like, I've had one forever. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not the same.

LinkedIn is not the same as it was pre COVID. It's a completely different beast and I think people are, are waking up to that. But it's taking a minute still.

Sam Swirsky: It's, you know, it, it's not the worst thing in the world though because people associate having content that gets engagement with, okay, that'll automatically create a successful business for me.

And it's not true at all. Yeah. And so more people are, are who have been posting for years are realizing, hey. I never got to that level that I thought I was gonna get to. Where if my content just gets this much engagement, then somehow I'll be the most popular person in my niche in the world and I'll make lots of money.

So it's kind of a good thing for a lot of people, including myself, I think.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we're all just kind of figuring out what it means to us, right? Like what is the use case for it? And we're gonna talk about that today because I think, you just kind of mentioned something. Getting big on any platform doesn't automatically turn into revenue for your business, and so you have to decide maybe why you're doing it and what your long-term goal is.

For me, it's always just been about brand awareness. At the end of the day, I want people to be aware of my show. I want people to be aware of who Kelly Kennedy is and what I do. Whether or not it turns into something long-term, who knows. But I think either way, in marketing, brand awareness is king. It's key.

No matter what you want to do, because it has. Influence outside of social media, right? Mm-hmm. Being known is never a bad thing, so it's kind of one of those things where at the end of the day, you gotta figure out what you're doing it for. But we're gonna get into it today, Sam, but before we do today's about you, man.

Like you are incredible. And to be honest, I haven't had somebody like you on the show in 300 episodes, and so I'm really excited today. Well, 292.

Sam Swirsky: Well, like whoever gets that 300th episode is like really lucky. I'm like, I'm thinking somebody's paying for that. Like, that wasn't an option given to me so.

Kelly Kennedy : Probably my fiance because she, she kind of supports me through the other, there goes in between.

But, um, yeah, it's kind of one of those things where we're all trying to figure out what to do with content. So to have somebody who's such an epic content expert, it's uh, it's truly an honor Dude. Take me back to the beginning though. How did you end up on this path? Did you always dream to be such a content expert?

Sam Swirsky: No. No. No. It's, it, it, it's kind of a bizarre path. I do not come from a corporate background and you can probably tell by my hat that I just snagged somewhere. I've had a lot of blue collar jobs and retail jobs and, you know, I never graduated college. Just kind of, just kind of went through, just exploring different things and was never very successful.

And a few years ago I had a couple of brothers Andrew and Danny, and they told me, they're like, Hey Sam, Sammy, you should, you should get, that's what they call me, Sammy. You should get on LinkedIn. You should give LinkedIn a try. I was like, what on earth am I gonna talk about on LinkedIn? I have nothing in common with any of these people.

And I was like, well, maybe if I just get on LinkedIn and I try to learn as much about the platform as I possibly can and then try to be as encouraging to people as I can, then somehow that'll be, that'll work. And little did I know that was the best possible strategy, right? That was the best strategy that I could use to kind of start growing on LinkedIn.

I found a few people like Justin Welsh and other Andy Foote, just people that were really pros with how the platform worked. And it really interested me because LinkedIn doesn't have a public like algorithm. Yeah. You don't really know how the platform works. And a lot of people complain about that.

They're like, oh, this stupid algorithm. I love the algorithm. I think it's great that it's unknown because if it was known then large corporations would just pay people tons of money to go make them popular. Like nobody who, who has less than a six figure job or makes less than a million dollars or whatever, whatever, have a chance on LinkedIn.

Because if doubt, if the algorithm was public, then, I mean, think about it, it's the money platform. This is where these businesses, these large businesses exist. So I was like, oh, hey, anyone, including myself, it's just this regular blue collar guy can make it on this platform if you really figure it out. So I kind of started that journey and you know, it's spiraled into, the mess that's become today.

So, you know, there you go.

Kelly Kennedy : But at the same time, what was it that, why understand it at all? Like for you, what was the curiosity in trying to figure out how it ticked? Was it like, Hey, if I can figure out how it ticks, maybe I can teach other people? Was that what was going through your brain at the time?

Sam Swirsky: You know, well a lot of it is just the community that's on LinkedIn. If you start to get really involved on LinkedIn, there's kind of like these two levels. There's this upper level, you know, the, or the first level where it's kind of people posting, Hey, this is my job anniversary and I just got a new job and here's this event that I have going on and everyone should come, even though they don't know anything about me.

It's like, it's all this very surface level stuff. It's not really insightful posts or anything like that. And so that's what most people think of it as. LinkedIn. In fact, I had a post a few weeks ago was like the people who think LinkedIn is cringe or just the people who don't understand LinkedIn as a platform, then when you start to get to know.

Some of the, the more rich rich kind of deep creators, you start posting yourself and getting involved. Like there's a, it's kind of, it's funny because the top layer is like 90% of the people who are on LinkedIn, like, they just have no idea. In that bottom layer is all the people that are really, really involved and get to know each other.

I'll tell you, most of my best friends are people that I probably half of my best friends are people that I've met from LinkedIn. Wow. Uh, you know, just we get on calls and talk and everything. Yeah. And it's just this amazing community. So that was a big part of it is like, okay, there's, there's something different about LinkedIn compared to other different platforms.

Because I had played around with posting on other platforms and never found a lot of success. I was interested in that. I don't know why it's probably because I like writing, not, not because I was so interested in becoming like, some huge influence or anything, but I've just always liked writing. It's one of my few skills that, uh, that I recognized at the time.

And I thought, okay, well let's give this a shot. And, and LinkedIn was just kind of the perfect combination of all the factors that I was looking for.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. LinkedIn community is such an incredible, supportive community. Um, I didn't see it until I started my show, so for me it was kind of like recognizing that, holy crap, these are my people.

Right? They're all, they're all my same. And then all the support that came through and you know, like you said, there's so many people that are listeners of the show who have grown connections with that would've just never happened had I not been on LinkedIn and used it as my platform for my show.

Sam Swirsky: Right. But and you say, lemme ask you that. You say the platform for your show is LinkedIn the main platform that you use to kind of advertise your show and get people, You know, new guests and everything.

Kelly Kennedy : The main social media platform, correct. We have, we started our Instagram this year just 'cause just because it's, why not?

Like you might as well, I'm posting all this stuff up anyway. I might as well put it on Instagram. Right. YouTube, we've only used the platform as like a, a space holder to hold things. Like basically I got it as a space holder. But no, LinkedIn has been, it's been our, like, number one, it's our place. It's where we live.

Sam Swirsky: I love it. I love it. Yeah. Link LinkedIn is underrated. Oh yeah. Which means that there's still a lot of opportunity for people, even with as many creators that are on LinkedIn now. The, the interesting, one of the most interesting things about LinkedIn is if you really put in the time, like let's say you just have four hours a day that you can do commenting and creating amazing posts and get in the dms and talk to people.

If you put in that kind of effort with a good strategy, you can literally become one of the top content creators on LinkedIn in a year or two. And I, I don't know if any other platform where you can say. That's the case. It's kind of, it's kind of high effort. LinkedIn is a high effort platform, which sometimes frustrates people.

'cause I'll meet with people, they're like, look, I wanna become a LinkedIn. Like influencers, like, okay, well you gotta put in, it's a community based platform. Yeah. It's a reciprocation based platform. If you're not willing to kind of give as much as you expect to get or even more, then you're not gonna do well. But if you do, if you do give a lot, you'll get a lot from LinkedIn.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Yeah. It's,

um, it's incredible, right? Like I, it's funny. Like I said, I've been on LinkedIn since 2013. I would say I didn't figure out how to truly start utilizing LinkedIn to grow a plat, to grow a platform until, let's call it 2023.

So like I'm really late to the party with regards to like, how do you actually grow a social media platform or a social media influence? Right. But I've learned so much and I've met so many incredible people. You know, you mentioned Nat Berman before the show. He's been incredible, super kind. It was very helpful.

Sam Swirsky: I'm in his group brand built.

It's a good group.

Kelly Kennedy : Yes. He's got Brand Built. Absolutely. Um, I've met, Liz Ryan, who's 3 million followers on LinkedIn. Right. But she's been at it forever. She's been at it since before. It was cool.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. That, that, that's, if someone has a million followers, it's, I don't know of anyone who has a million followers who started like 2020 or after.

If someone has a million followers, they started back in like 2016 or something.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Yeah. We, you know, I mean, I've had the pleasure of interviewing such incredible people. Uh, I got to meet Chester Elton, uh, the, the orange carrot guy. Awesome. He's, uh, he's super cool. He's super cool. He is from, he was actually from Edmonton, which was pretty neat.

Oh. Yeah, man, it's been like, you know, you asked before the show, like, is this what you've been using to grow your show and meet people? It's like, yeah, what, what else would people be using other than this? Like, to me, you'd be an idiot not to be using LinkedIn to make those connections.

Sam Swirsky: Well, I'll tell you, I think for anyone listening, because I study a lot of other social media platforms, not just LinkedIn, I like to study emerging social media platforms and figure them out as well.

If you're, if you really wanna grow as a creator and eventually sell something, whether it's consulting services or, or some kind of course or anything like that, I think people need to be either on LinkedIn or they need to be on Instagram. Because you have the DMS options, like everyone like Oh link.

LinkedIn is not that great. LinkedIn has the best DMing options Yes. Of any platform period. And then Instagram, from what I understand, is also pretty good. I'm not an Instagram pro, but I've heard good things from that. So if you're gonna, if you're gonna pick a few platforms, I'm telling you gotta either have Instagram or you gotta have LinkedIn.

And LinkedIn has the best social media profile by far. Nothing, no other platform comes anywhere close to the social media profile that's on LinkedIn.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. I, I love LinkedIn, man. I don't know what I would be doing if I wasn't on it. I'm not sure I making instagram on my own.

Sam Swirsky: It's the only thing I've been able to stick with.

I've done all kind, I've done every random job you can think of, right? Yeah. But then I discovered LinkedIn. I was like, okay, I'm actually gonna dedicate some time to this platform. And it's

Kelly Kennedy : working. It's working.

Well, it's crazy, dude. Like, I'm like the perfect example of like a, a nobody who figured it out, right?

Like I, I literally started this show talking to a wall in my basement in February of 2023. And in two years in, well, I guess by the time this is coming out, three years, in three years, we've managed to, you know, do 300 episodes at this point, you know, at this point in time of our conversation where I think we're sitting somewhere around 230,000 downloads.

Wow. But to do that in two years, using nothing but LinkedIn as my like main social media page. And obviously we, you know, we've done a little bit advertising, but like, it's not to the same extent of, of anything we've done on LinkedIn. And to go from that, you know, I have 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. I think I, when I started this journey, I think I had 10 from my career.

So like, it was pretty meteoric with regards to like, to starting a platform and I would encourage anybody to take that leap. Yeah. It's work. And you know, you talked about that there's no like fast track. You're not going to just like turn it on and in three months be absolutely killing it unless you already have like a celebrity status somewhere else.

But it doesn't take as long as people think if they're willing to actually put in the effort.

Sam Swirsky: No, it's, It doesn't take nearly as long as people, the, I'll tell you, the thing that people get in, that people get wrong about LinkedIn is consistency.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah.

Sam Swirsky: Because people think consistency means posting consistently, and it, it's like, no, if you really believe in consistency, then your content should be consistently getting better.

Your strategy should be consistently improving. So everyone, you know, people like are like, oh, well, you know, as long as I'm consistent, it's like, apply that to every area, though. Like, it's not just you not engaging with LinkedIn, not commenting, not getting in, you know, getting in the dms and just you posting twice a week, for four years.

I've seen people where we started around the same time and they're still mostly doing that same strategy of just, Hey, let me just post, not really get involved in anything else. And somehow they have this belief in their head that eventually they're gonna explode and become super popular.

It's like, it's not how it works. You've gotta, you've gotta challenge yourself and if, if you're not challenging yourself, you're gonna have a, you're gonna have a rough time with LinkedIn because it's gonna get really boring really fast. Mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Well, take me into this, right? Like, I think most people start a social media platform because, hey, when we were kids, we got Facebook.

Right, right, right. Nobody understands there's not, you have a set of knowledge that I would say, I think if the world is lucky, and I mean lucky, half a percent. Of the world's population has as much knowledge as you do. And I think, I think even then, that would be a massive amount of people, like the, the knowledge that you have into how a social media platform works.

Nobody has it. Nobody has it. The rest of us out here, Sam, are just playing in the playground, not understanding what we're doing, just recognizing that, oh, we can post things, we can comment on things, we can, we can, uh, we can advertise our businesses or whatever else. Mm-hmm. But it's like you understand it from let's call it the shadow side.

The shadow side of the, of the social media world. Right.

Sam Swirsky: Thank you. Thank you. I, I think anyone who becomes, obsessed with a super nerdy topic over a long enough period of time gets, you know, there's, there's somebody out there that knows more about guppies than anyone in the world. Right?

That's right. And, and we're, we're not recognizing them for the genius that they are. For, for knowing all about this one kind of pitch. Like it's just you. You pick whatever you're really interested in and you just go with it and yeah. I don't know if it's like, especially guys, but there's some people who just have that kind of obsessive personality where you're just like, okay, I'm gonna learn literally everything there is to learn about this one subject.

Yeah. And you just get way, way into it.

Kelly Kennedy : Once again. Sure. But there is no book, there is no gigantic encyclopedia that says, this is how LinkedIn works. Read it front to back and you'll know how to become popular. Right.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. Well, I mean, there are books, people have written books that, you know, there, there's some good stuff out there.

A lot of it's just finding the right people and really following I, I think PE-people. Let's say you find a creator on LinkedIn who talks about LinkedIn and you're, there's so many ask, there's multiple LinkedIn coaches. Yeah, number one, there's LinkedIn live streaming coaches and, and branding coaches and like the aesthetics part of it and, and just everything.

So, you know, my, my focus is really kind of on the growth side of LinkedIn. I see a lot of advantages to, hey, if your content gets out to more people, that gives you more opportunities. And then I'll say, especially after working with Alex and Leila Hormozi, the offer side of it, I think that's where people can really make a difference now, is that you'll say you take four or five creators, they all have similar numbers in terms of their content and everything, but whoever has the clearest message, the clearest offer, like the most the, the next steps for people to take without it being confusing.

Those are the people who win. The shift that I've seen, I've, I posted for 550 days straight. I started posting, I got the job with Justin Welsh, very, which I hardly knew anything at that time. So kudos to him and Jennifer for hiring me on. As their community manager for a bit.

And then just kind of, going from there, like for those 550 days, I barely made a dime off of LinkedIn. Yeah. And I think it's because I was only just focused on having my content do better and kind of, and I, I think people saw me as a nice guy. They liked me, but I didn't have, I was just kind of like, Hey, I'm the general LinkedIn knowledge guy can help you sort of figure out the program, the, the platform.

And people were like, okay, well how does that directly relate to me? How, how does that help me specifically? And now what, you know, I was just trying to call with one of my clients before, but we're just talking about, okay, let's make your offer as clear as humanly possible. Because if there's four or five creators and somebody goes, okay, well this person says they do this and that, and they do all these other things well, nobody wants to reach out to someone and feel like an idiot.

Yeah, right. Nobody wants to reach out and say, Hey, you know, I was wondering if you could help me with this. And for them to say, I'm not even doing that anymore. Like, why are you even reaching out? And I don't think people understand, like people are nervous nowadays. Like, they're just like I don't wanna sound dumb.

That's a big thing for social media. People will write entire posts and post it, and then if they don't get any engagement in the first 10 minutes, they'll delete it. And some people have done that dozens of times. Wow. It's, it's a big problem on LinkedIn because nobody wants to be judged. Yeah. So you just make it say like, Hey, judgment for each zone I'm looking to help people with this specific thing.

And you just connect with people. It, it's all about that connection, but it's, it takes a while to really understand that.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Yeah. We have some time here, so take us into it, right? Like. What are people missing about social media? What is the average LinkedIn user not understanding about what the platform is for?

Because maybe that's it. Maybe we don't really understand what the platform is for. And this isn't just LinkedIn, this could be any platform. I think, people get on platforms 'cause somebody told them to or told them it was cool, right? Right. But they don't necessarily understand past that, what they were trying to do with it.

So maybe take us into, like I said, that backside of it. First off, what is LinkedIn for second off, what do they want the users to do? And third, how can you do those things more effectively so that LinkedIn rewards you for it?

Sam Swirsky: I'm gonna let you right now know, right now I have the memory of a goldfish.

So you're gonna have to go through those three that you just asked me. But like as far as what LinkedIn is for, LinkedIn is for community. You know, I'll talk with people and they'll say, Hey, you know, I wanna get on LinkedIn and start growing there. And I, I have met with people and I tell them straight up, don't hire me.

LinkedIn is not the best social media platform you, for you right now. You need to focus on this. And then I'll refer 'em to somebody I know who's an expert on that platform typically. And I, I know some of the other platforms pretty well, so I can offer some beginning tips, but LinkedIn is for community.

If you're not interested in growing a community, like you have built this incredible community with your podcast, all of these guests that you've had, all of your listeners, all of your readers, like you have a community here, it's not especially on the business side of things, people are used to having kind of the paid ad campaigns and thinking of that almost as social media.

And they put that out and it's maybe they have somebody that they've hired to do it. And it's kind of a direct ROI thing where it's, okay, I paid this much money and I see this much return and I try to tweak it. And then people wanna take the same principles of that and apply it to a social media platform like LinkedIn.

But organic is very different than paid media. You know, I, one of, one of the clients that I recently started working with, he, we've been connected for three or four years and we haven't even interacted that much on LinkedIn. And he reached out and he's like, Hey, I love everything you've been doing.

I've been following you for years. I'd like to work with you. That's the power of organic social media. That's what people don't understand about LinkedIn is that you are getting all this ROI when you're sleeping, like right before the call. Right. And I hate to sound like I'm just bragging. These last couple of months have been really good for me for some reason.

Okay. Right before this call, I saw, hey somebody messaged me, uh, on another platform where I kind of used my LinkedIn profile to kind of brag about myself. They message, they, uh, they bought one of my consultations, so I haven't even had time to message them back. I literally saw it just a few minutes before I got on this call with you.

So after the call, I'll go back and thank them that they paid for a consultation. Hopefully it leads to more business. Yeah. Uh, but having that just work for you, you can take a vacation and come back and have all of these leads to go back and respond to. Whereas if you're doing paid media or something else where it's just kind of more direct, you know, play for play or whatever kind of deal it works, but it's as the second you stop paying into it, it stops working for you.

Yeah. Whereas with social media, I mean, I've seen friends take a break for a few months and then they come back and yeah, they have to kind of restart their, uh, their community again and everything to a certain degree, but they're able to do that because they've built something long lasting.

And I'll say the, the example that, uh, that Alex Hormozi gives is that he. You know, he's worked out on, he's worked building this, super strong, powerful body for a decade or more, right? More than probably two decades. And it's to the point where he doesn't have to do a whole lot of work in order to maintain it.

I'll tell you, like I, I only post like once or twice a week. Now that's a, well, we can get into that later. People are posting way too much on LinkedIn. It's hurting them more than, more than helping them oftentimes. But I can kind of just maintain my social media because it's gotten up to this certain level on LinkedIn where I don't have to put in, when I started on LinkedIn, I was commenting for no joke, probably four hours a day, almost every day on LinkedIn getting involved in that community.

But I built that muscle up to the point where, and you see it all across the board, for a lot of these bigger creators, they don't have to put in quite the same amount of effort. And it's, so, it's kind of the off opposite, you know, paid media, you have to put in a tremendous amount of effort and that stops but.

But for this, you put in a tremendous amount of effort and it just keeps going.

Kelly Kennedy : What does LinkedIn want us to be doing with the platform in, in your experience, what do they, what do they actually want?

Sam Swirsky: Okay. This, we're, we're, we're getting into the dark side LinkedIn now, well, we gotta, sometimes LinkedIn, LinkedIn wants you to pay for their business profiles.

They want you to pay for sales Nav. They want you to pay for their recruiter programs. LinkedIn, I, every community has a life of its own. Whether that's a community that's on social media, whether that's a paid community that maybe somebody set up and they have members. And it's really kind of, if it's gonna last, it has to be, there has to be buy-in from the people that you have in the community and not just direct from the people who are running the community.

So LinkedIn has taken on a life of its own that I think is really has really prospered sometimes in despite of what the execs at LinkedIn are doing. And I know I'm not winning myself anything with LinkedIn. I'm never gonna be one of their creator. I I'm very thankful for the platform. Thank you LinkedIn people for creating the platform.

Thank I, I really, really appreciate it. I'll tell you, a lot of, a lot of their top exec stuff gone and looked, they don't really post hardly har, hardly ever. They rarely comment. I remember this, uh, one of my favorite podcasters, uh, who talks about LinkedIn is Mark Williams and he says that he'll put together trainings and some of the people who are the most interested, who learn the most are employees of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is always. Some of their features, they, they implement and then they take away, I will say for the future, it's a video, right? That people can actually implement right away. Yeah. That's not me just going on a rant. Problems with LinkedIn. Yeah. Is a video start, start getting into their, their video, uh, features.

Video's a little bit interesting in that it doesn't always get the most engagement, but it presents you as a leader like nothing else. Yes. Uh, seeing somebody write out a post is one thing, and I, this is, look, I need to get more involved in video on LinkedIn. There's some great people out there who talk about Selena Young you know, is great.

Uh, if you wanna get to know more about kind of the video side of LinkedIn, but it builds up trust like nothing else. And it also kind of builds up that star factor. When somebody sees you in a video, they. It makes them think of YouTube, I think of all these different platforms and you start to kind of become like that guy or that gal.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, to people. So video is really, really powerful. It often gets more reposts as well, so it may not get as many likes and comments, but it often gets more reposts, you know, one of those little nerdy LinkedIn facts. So, I would say more videos and then also something that I agree with LinkedIn, right?

I don't disagree with America. Everything is, they're saying people need to put out more instructional content. I see a lot of posts going out on, on LinkedIn, which are basically the, my example is I took a walk with my dog and I saw a rainbow. Here are the five lessons I learned about life. Right? That is probably 50% of LinkedIn.

Yeah. Are those kind of posts and yeah. It's one of the biggest problems right now because anyone can kind of write this anecdotal kind of thing. People need. To be inspired. Yes, that's important. But after they get inspired, they need specific instructions. So to have a post where you say, Hey I've learned this and this and this, this is how you can achieve this too.

Take these literal steps. Yeah. And you go through and, and just like you're put, somebody's reading a, a list of instructions, uh, directions to put together, you know, a clock or something. Right. Like you go you literally have to explain it. Those posts will get you more business because you thinking of it in, in terms of kind of the wide entertainment based posts.

Yeah. Or kind of feel good posts are the domain of almost every social media platform. That's Facebook, that's Instagram, that's a lot of YouTube TikTok, whatever. So the competition for those posts is very, very high. And. Where does it get you afterwards? You can have a high engagement post that gets you no business.

Yes. Right. I talk to people about that all the time. They're like, oh yeah, I got like 500 likes, but I ultimately didn't get any business from it. Like, well, what was the post about? Well, I found this funny video on YouTube and I put it up, and then I had a couple of my own thoughts, like, with LinkedIn we don't have a, a feature to, to get paid for your posts.

If you're on YouTube and you put up something that got 2 million views, well at least you're getting rev ad revenue from it. Yeah. But on LinkedIn, you're not getting anything like that. You, so you gotta be really intentional. Not that, hey, having an occasional viral post where you get more followers is not the worst thing in the world.

No. By any means, but you gotta have some instructional content. Because I'll, I'll see people who don't really have any instructional content, or very rarely, and they're like, why am I not doing well? It's like, people position themselves as someone who's easy to liken their space. Yeah. But that trust really only comes from showing that you actually know what you're talking about.

Mm-hmm. That's a very long rant. I'm gonna let you take over for a bit.

Kelly Kennedy : No, no, no. I, I, I agree completely. And you know, just to touch on the video part, we've just started our video series of, of the BDP, essentially where I'm kind of coming on once, twice a week, coming on, on a video, not long, you know, three minutes, four minutes, just talking about something and try and inspire, trying to educate, whatever it be.

And dude, like overnight, three to four times the impressions. Wow. It was night and day. Like you can literally see like the months coming up to now. And then with the video posts, my impressions have gone up like four times.

Sam Swirsky: That's great. Just from video. And what I see with video is, I think the more you do it, the more it benefits you.

So if you just put up one post. Yeah. And maybe it gets traction. Maybe it doesn't, you know, it's not gonna do too much if you're consistent with video, people are on LinkedIn, like, variety. So it's nice to put up like, you know, different stuff. But the people who really like video, they're like, okay, I'm gonna follow Kelly because he is got video.

They know to expect it to go to your profile only sticking with one kind of content can be good. But then you lose out on other people. So if you mix it up, it's great, but it's nice to be known for certain things.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Well for me, I avoided it like the plague. I didn't wanna do video, man. I didn't, I put it off.

I You're so good on video though. Amazing energy. It wasn't my thing, it wasn't what I wanted to do. Right. Like I started a podcast 'cause I can heavily edit this and sound incredible all the time and always make it work out. Right. There was a distance that I get with a podcast and I love my podcast. I dunno what I would do without it.

But the video thing is the next step for sure. And it's not a video podcast. Let me just like state that. Mm-hmm. I don't care about that. I care about, about getting out there and educating and inspiring in different ways. And one of them is gonna be through video, but for me it's been a struggle. But you're absolutely right.

Like you nailed it. I, the reason that I chose it, the reason that I decided that 2025 is gonna be our launch year to video is, I think we've gone so far in that like crazy AI direction. Mm-hmm. That video is the only way to authentically connect through social media Now.

Sam Swirsky: That's a really good point. That's so smart. I should be interviewing you right now.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. It just occurred to me that it's like we've gone so far this one way, there's gonna be a massive rebound the other way. And I guess by the time people are hearing this, they'll know whether or not I was right. But I think 2025 is gonna be like the year of video.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's, I think that's smart. I think that's, uh, that's gonna I typically try to put together like a year, like a predictions thing each year. I think one of them was that video was gonna do better or more intentional. And then they put together the video, Hey, we're gonna put in a video feed.

I was like, yes.

Kelly Kennedy : So, okay, so LinkedIn is actually putting in a video feed. 'cause I didn't know about that.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. So LinkedIn has, they, they already have it in place. It's, so if you look on your mobile phone or your, what else kind of phone would you have? You look on your phone? Um, my hollow. My hollow phone.

Your hollow phone. Right. Uh, and there should be a little thing at the bottom that says video and then you can get into the feed and start scrolling through it. I think what I've heard is that if your video is 45 seconds or less, then it can show up into the video feed. I think maybe some people have the access, have the option to just add video right into the video feed.

I don't really know. I'm not an expert on the video feed. There's some, yeah. People who know a lot more about it than I do. So if that's all wrong, I'd apologize. Uh, LinkedIn's a big platform. There's a lot to know about LinkedIn though. Yeah. But yeah, video for sure. And going back to that thing where if you're giving, I wanted to touch on, uh, what I was talking about earlier of the, uh, specific instructions.

People are putting up, okay, so 2020 hit everyone COVID. They're like, oh, well I guess I'll just live my entire life online. And they got her on LinkedIn and then everyone started posting. And now with AI being introduced the number of posts that are going up, people say, oh, only 1% of people are posting on LinkedIn.

I don't think that's true. I think it's like five or 6% or something at this point. I think it's gone way, way up. And what. I think the technique that most people are using is, well, I gotta produce more content in order to compete with all this content. And I say, heck no to all of that. LinkedIn does not have a content problem.

There is no lack of content on LinkedIn. There's a lack of good content on LinkedIn. So this is from the guy who posted for 550 days straight. I post 1, 2, 3 times a week. That's it. My, my impressions are up like crazy numbers year over year. Uh, and, and I was bringing that one of my, one of my clients through, I was like, he's like, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with LinkedIn.

You know, what, what are we doing? I'm like, first of all, stop posting so much stop posting. We reduced, I think he was posting five times a week. We reduced it to two or three times a week. His engagement, I think went up almost a hundred percent month over month. Wow. So, for everyone out, everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid right now.

Yeah. Where you just, you've gotta compete in this game that I'm gonna let you know you're not gonna win this game. And then also consider that comments are content. Okay. That's something you're gonna be hearing a lot from if you're not already hearing it from the LinkedIn people that you follow.

Comments are content. It's ba I have put out comments that have gotten, I think I put out a comment the other day that got 80 likes. Wow. So if people, if you're putting out really high quality comment, this is the best advice that you're gonna hear best are on this podcast from me.

Kelly's already given a lot of advice. I'm not trying to con compete with them from me. If you're posting multiple times a week limit how often you're posting, make sure you're getting some real good instructional content, content out there because people need those steps. And then spend that extra time that you would've spent creating the posts, leaving really good comments on other people's posts, because that's gonna make your, the comment, the content that you have going up, your posts going up.

Do way, way better from the comments. And then you're also gonna get people coming to your profile from the amazing comments that you leave. Try to leave them early if you can, on other people's posts.

Kelly Kennedy : Okay. I love that. Nat Berman had actually mentioned when I had my podcast interview with him that he's very specific and people are racing to get to his posts at seven in the morning or whatever, his posting time.

Yeah.

And that's why, hey, it's the people that want to try to get there early so they can drive engagement to their own pages. Yeah.

Sam Swirsky: Same thing with Justin Welsh. People go to his, whenever he posts, I don't worry about the times that people post because I utilize the bell feature like crazy. I have it turned on for probably a hundred people or something at this point.

So when I go to post you know, I'll engage for 30 minutes or an hour, you know, sometimes less, just depending. And I, I will have all these major creators and like, okay, 20 people open up their profiles real quick. They've all posted in the last hour. I'll go and comment on everyone and then I'll post so much better than going through the feed.

Because even if you search the feed by most recent, it doesn't show you most recent posts. It shows you like just, I don't know what it is. It's kind of a useless feature almost.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Wow. Okay. Okay. So the last question that I was gonna ask you here in regarding to those three questions was, how do we comply with what LinkedIn wants?

And from the sounds of it, what they want you to do is engage with people.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. They do want you to engage with people for sure. Quality over quantity. Leaving really good. Comments on people's posts. I'll also say LinkedIn introduces new features and there's kind of this, there's all these little nerdy LinkedIn scientists when we run our own experiments and then we talk to each other and we come to like consensus, like it's like, it's kind of like a scientific community almost.

And there's a little bit of a consensus that if LinkedIn has new features that they're putting out, then if you adopt those features, there's probably a better chance that they're gonna boost your content over time. Uh, so they put out a lot of different stuff. So whatever they're putting out, like with this, the video, right?

If you engage with, if you start putting out the video, there's a good chance that your content will start doing a little better. But yeah, definitely just being a part of the community. They have live streaming is big on LinkedIn, engage in live streaming. I, I talk to people all the time. They're like, I did not even realize LinkedIn had live streaming.

Yeah, they're changing up their live streaming format. They had an audio feature and now they're kind of switching it to more of a video feature with, yeah, it's, it's weird, but getting involved in. There's kind of the extracurricular activities of LinkedIn that you can get involved with. So that's the live streams or let's say somebody puts up a comment on one of your friend's posts and you know that person well, instead of just only leaving your own comment, you can engage with other people.

That does really well. You know, I'll, I'll typically, if I leave a comment on one of my friends' posts, I'll see, okay, well who else has left to comment? And I'll like their stuff. There's all these little ways. Yeah. I mean, I started putting together a book of like 101 LinkedIn tips and tricks, right? Yeah.

So hopefully that'll come out in 2025. There's all these little ways to kind of get a little bit of attention. Right. Gary Vee says, that's the new kind of currency is attention, right? Sure. And so like, let's say you go to somebody's posts and they have 20 likes. They have zero in interaction. Like you have the light bulb and you have the laughing emoji and all that, and they don't have any other kinds of little interactions.

Well just take the time to leave a little light bulb or something, to show that you're, that the post was interesting. And I guarantee you that if somebody has 20 likes and they finally got another kind of interaction on their page, they're probably gonna go look and be like, oh, well who left this right?

Yeah. So there's all these little tricks that you can use, but yeah, it's just being involved in the community. There's it. The more you start LinkedIn can feel unfamiliar. There's multiple, it's al it's like a big website, right? You've got multiple different top icons you can go to, to look at and, and get involved.

And it takes a while for people. Really spending a lot of time on the platform to even really get it, because I'll talk to people, I'm like, okay, well go to this page and go to that page. And they're like whoa, whoa. Hold up. I don't know where you're going. And I have to break it down, like, okay, go slow.

Yeah. Um, you know, and I'll, I'll, I'll explain where, where things are and, and that's sometimes people who've been on the platform for a very long time. So just spend a lot of time on the platform really, if you're trying to get to know it. Just explore the different pages they have LinkedIn Learning, they have the live stream, they have the My Network page where LinkedIn will suggest people for you to connect with you know, try sending some personalized connection requests.

There's a thousand, there's probably a thousand ways, individual little ways to get more involved with people on LinkedIn. Just try to invest in, in a few different ways and, and become, an expert at those ways.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. You know, one of the things I was gonna say is like those collaboration articles, those have been really good for me, right.

You throw, you throw up just like your own little piece to it and the next thing you know, you know, you got like 15 comments or 20 comments on it, right? Yeah. They're pretty big right now.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah, they're big. Um, LinkedIn's always promoting those, so for sure just go engage and it's a great way for people not in your network to see, uh, content from you as well.

Kelly Kennedy : That's right. You know, we're talking to a lot of business owners today, Sam, and I think people are really struggling. I'll tell you, some of the coaching clients that I've worked with on the business development front, they're really struggling with their own personal brand. Um, you know, part of it now is I'm kind of telling people, Hey, I don't think you can really do effective business development anymore unless you are also working on your own personal brand at the same time, because frankly, your personal brand is gonna get 10 times the engagement as your business.

Right. What advice are you giving to your business owner clients right now?

Sam Swirsky: Oh yeah. So the, an analogy that I'll bring up a lot is 20 years ago when websites were fairly new. That was the thing, like, okay, well every business has to have a website and we kind of all, most, I don't even have a website. I use LinkedIn as my website.

Yeah. But most, most businesses will have a website that just kind of became standard knowledge and now it's, Hey, every person who runs a business needs to have a social media aspect to it. And that's, that's really tricky for a lot of people who they don't wanna become a, a social media influencer.

They wanna have just an honest business that they run and that people refer to other people and they do well with it. They don't wanna have to wear all these hats. And, you know, a lot of folks have this disdain of social media influencers because there are a lot of fake people out there, and there's a lot of people who have cheated others.

And that reputation is not a hundred percent unmerited. So it's kind of a mindset of, hey, you know, your brand. Right? And I'm sure you've talked to other people about this. Your brand is not just. This, these images and these posts and this profile that you have on social media, your brand is how do people already know you?

Yeah. What, what, what are your values? What are you known for? What, what's your personality? You just take that and you put it up on social media and for people that feel like they're just getting, you know, way far behind and everything give yourself give yourself some grace. If somebody's even thinking of this, they're already in that next best place, right?

And just really consider which platform to go on. If somebody's active on one platform, there's a lot of pressure. I think they feel a lot of internal pla pressure that is the platform that they have to choose. But there's probably like 10 major social media platforms right now. Find the one that works best for you and it, it doesn't have to be the most popular platform.

I think Facebook is amazing. I think people hugely underestimate Facebook as a platform. And I, I, I'll meet with people and they have more of a local business. The Facebook Instagram combo for a local business is unmatched. You're not, and I've seen people try to improve get a lot of you know, growth for their local business on LinkedIn is really difficult, i'll say there's a couple of exceptions. Utah is, has one of the most engaged LinkedIn communities on the planet, and pretty much everyone lives in the wa Wasatch front. So LinkedIn can actually be pretty beneficial for you if you're in that kind of demographic. But if you have just kind of a local, you know, cookie shop that you're trying to develop, right?

Yeah. Well get on Facebook. So just have some grace for yourself. Put, do some research before you do anything. Right. It's, I've got, like I said before, I have a 10 year commitment to LinkedIn. And if somebody wants to spend there there's too much at a certain point, right? You probably shouldn't study social media platforms for a year before you get involved in one.

But if, if you're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so far behind, I don't know the right techniques. Everyone's doing better than me. People tend to show their best selves on social media. So you're probably not as far behind as you think. Yeah, right. First off, and then just give yourself some grace. Say, Hey, I'm gonna find out the, I'm gonna look at the top 10 social media platforms, right?

You got Facebook, TikTok, Instagram YouTube LinkedIn. I've seen people are doing great things with Reddit even. Uh, so, Pinterest is really good. So just study this different social media platform study. You know, your own personality. Where are you gonna do really well? And choose a co one or two max social media platforms that you wanna really figure out before you start expanding.

Because people like, oh wow, you work with Alex Hormozi and their whole team and you know, I wanna just get, you know, with ai, I just wanna put myself everywhere. And I really caution people against that.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah.

Sam Swirsky: Because you're figuring out your brand and how you connect with your audience. Take some time and it's, you know, it's one of the, there's lessons that you have to learn before you can advance.

And so if people are thinking, okay, well I'm gonna put out a hundred pieces of content before I even really know what I wanna talk about, just so I can get the followers. Yeah. You're doing yourself, you're doing yourself and your business a disservice. So take it slow. I think one post a week on LinkedIn is amazing.

Post once a week on LinkedIn or on another social media platform. And just get to try to know other people on the platform. Be curious. Don't, you don't need to, to act like you're the authority. You know, I try to stay humble, right? There's other people that know more and different things than me, right?

There's different approaches to LinkedIn. I'll meet with someone else who has a diff who has a different approach to me, and I'll learn a lot from them. And so if you stay humble you do it for the long term. Know that social media is something that you're really gonna have to put years into.

Kelly Kennedy : Yes.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. So I have a 10 year commitment to LinkedIn. Maybe that scares you, but I, I would urge anyone who's gonna try out a social media platform that you think is gonna work well for you, put in a minimum of two years into it before you quit. And just give yourself some grace.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Like my argument would be is that LinkedIn isn't going anywhere.

At the end of the day, I don't even see it as like a 10 year commitment. I see it as if you are in business. You need to commit to it. Right? Like, I don't even put, I don't even put a timeline. I'm just like, look, I'm in business. I need to be part of LinkedIn.

Sam Swirsky: And I'm saying the 10 year commitment, which I'll probably renew after, but it kind, it got me going at, at the beginning to really kinda invest in it.

Yeah. But it, it's a really good question. It's just, uh, it, yeah. Everyone has fomo. Everyone feels bad about themselves, I think to a certain extent. Yeah. We're all ling. Yep. And they're like you know, I, I only wanna put out content if it's the best content. And so a lot of people are using AI to write their content now, which has some pros and cons.

The pro is you can get something that's fairly decent and put it out there, but the con is it's gonna limit your development right away. Yeah. Whatever writing skill or, or level that you have, if you start using ai then you're just stuck there. You're not gonna keep growing.

And, uh, you know, that's really, you know, it's growing you as a human being. Writing is such a cathartic thing to do. Yes. Uh, I've learned so much about myself through my writing on LinkedIn. It's basically my journal, right. I'm not, I'm terrible at keeping a journal, but I, I'm good at about putting posts up on LinkedIn.

So just, you know, time, just put in some time, put in some, put in effort for sure. But don't compare, don't compare yourself too much with other people. I will say comparing yourself with other people sometimes can be a good thing because maybe you can learn from those people.

Kelly Kennedy : Yes. Yes. Yes. And you, you don't know their story.

I think that's what everyone needs to like understand here. I've interviewed some incredible people who've done crazy things on LinkedIn, but understand, they didn't start yesterday. Many of them started five, 10 years ago, right? It takes time, it takes effort. Nothing happens overnight. And I love that you spoke about writing your own content.

And the reason I really love that, Sam, is that for about a year and a half to nearly two years of the bdp, I primarily used AI to do a lot of my content writing. One, I'm just really busy, so trying to make that work. But what I realized later on, and you know, we talked about it quickly as like, I'm trying to be more authentic.

I'm trying to connect through video. Part of my goal with Authenticity in 20, like mid 20, 24 here in 2025 was to start handwriting my own posts. And dude, the moment I started doing that, my posts started getting bigger and bigger and bigger because they're so different from everything else out there.

Everybody's using ai. You wanna stand out, write your own post.

Sam Swirsky: Wow. Yeah, that's perfect. I, another, another moment where I'm like why am I the person being interviewed here? Yeah. It, look, AI is getting better in some regards and it can mimic posts or whatever, but most of it kind of looks the same.

That's right. And people can recognize that. So when I see a post, I'm like, okay, this is an AI post. I'm not inclined to engage with it typically, uh, because I know somebody is just putting up AI or whatever, and I wanna connect with the person, right? Yeah. Like that's, there's a connection there.

I wanna get to know this person better. And if they're putting up ai, it's, it's disappointing. It's, it's a little bit sad. I think the people who make the best use of AI are a step people who are very, very good writers who they wanna play around with some things, right? Like, well, I put up this headline, but you know, I need it to be seven spaces shorter.

Let me put it into, I use that sometimes, like, okay, I haven't got this headline, but it needs. For the purposes, the structuring of the post. Yeah. So the people who are experts in their fields to be able to u they're gonna be able to utilize link to utilize AI in a better kind of way. Yeah. Now I don't do it with most posts.

Most posts I still just write myself. But it's a tool. I'm not just, dissing on ai. It does have its purpose, but I wanna grow as a creator. I wanna be a much better writer in a few years than I am right now. Yeah. And if I just use AI for everything, I'm not going to be so it, it's gonna limit my growth and development.

Kelly Kennedy : For me, the answer is somewhere in the middle. You know, with a lot of my show stuff or like just structuring the episode post with like a brief summary, things like that, a hundred percent. I'm probably never gonna stop using AI for that. However, if I am doing a personal post, I'm talking about something that happened to me, I'm talking about a video that I created, I'm going to write that post.

Why? Because that is more authentic. And what I'm trying to do in the post is be authentic. I think we need to think about what do you wanna convey through this post? Is it okay if just like an episode summary post and a quick video from the episode comes out and it's ai? Yeah, absolutely.

Because it's just to tease the episode, right?

Sam Swirsky: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a good use for it because AI is great at taking massive amounts of of information and then condensing it. So that's a perfect text use kind of example. I'll use ai 'cause I have clients where they put up YouTube videos.

I do some ghost writing, right? So they've already created the piece of content. So they're getting they're already growing in their space and learning from that. But then I'll take the transcript from it and use that to kind of craft into a post. So it's not me just writing for them, it's still like 90% them.

But I'll use AI because I'll say, Hey, the transcript is just this mess of words. Can you please put it into grammatical structures? Yes. Uh, and it's hugely, it saves a ton of time for me. Totally. So, I love ai. I think it has some great uses. And that's the, that's the conversation everyone is having nowadays is, okay, well where, where is that line?

And everyone has to decide that for themselves. And I don't think there's a wrong answer where it's like, well, I'm gonna use almost all ai. It's not making you a bad person. No. It's just gonna limit people's growth. Yeah. And for me, like, I wanna stay one, I think I'm very, very good at what I do, and I wanna be the best at what I do.

And if I slow down, then everyone else is gonna pass me up. So, uh, you know, I, I like having that pressure on myself a little bit to keep being good at my craft.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah, I agree. I agree completely. And I think at the end of the day, it's what is, what is your goal with the platform, right? Mm-hmm. My goal is always going to be to educate, inspire, and connect in as authentic way as possible.

And so for me to do that, I can't fully embrace AI for everything the way that I have been. I have to go back. And it honestly, it took me a long time to realize that that was the path I needed to take. Mm-hmm. Right? Like a few years into using the damn thing when I'm like, you know what, this just isn't hitting the mark for how I want to represent Kelly Kennedy moving forward.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah. No, I, I, I think that's wise and uh, I think people are gonna get a lot from that. Listening to this episode, and on a very non-serious note, I noticed that both of our names are obliterated, and I thought that was cool.

Kelly Kennedy : We both have some pretty okay names. Our parents must be kind of awesome.

That's right, that's right. Sam, it has been a total honor, my friend. I really appreciate you coming on here and learning us all about LinkedIn, showing us the back, the back calls, LinkedIn. Dude, you do a lot, you know, you're a busy guy. You're a coach yourself. Take me into it. What, uh, what are you doing for people these days?

Sam Swirsky: You know, I 've really changed things up in that I'm trying to stick. I don't I fail with it sometimes because some people you know, I wanna offer them a little bit, kind of a lower offer or something, but I'm really trying to stick to a core offer. You know, I, I have an offer where I, I walk through people 30 days through LinkedIn and just show them, Hey, here are all the basics.

Here's how to grow your brand for the long term. And since kind of. Having something like that where it's just structured, I'll tell you, that is the biggest, smartest thing I could have done for myself, because everything that I'm doing for my clients, I'll have a client who recently said, Hey, I want a longer roadmap so I can kind of understand where I'm going with this.

And now I get to build that out for them. I just built it and now I, and then do it from other clients. So it's like, okay, wow, I, you stick with the same offer. And it's, you know, as a coach it starts to really compound upon itself because you get an incredible amount of resources and strategies and you know, okay, here's something that people struggled with in the past.

And I can limit that. And, uh, I was thinking even before the podcast, I'm like, sometimes I'll talk to people and they say, oh, I have three or four businesses that are run. I don't think that's the brag that people think it's,

Uh, I don't, I don't think that's helping people as much as they think it is having one or two things that you really focus on. And the way Alex warn Moey, I would say I was a huge fan of Alex Warn Moey before I ever worked for, so I, I refer to his stuff a lot because not just having worked for him and, and help, run his LinkedIn brand and everything, but just the, the information that he has, I go to it all the time.

But just having, uh, just having one kind of, you can have kind of one offer. You can have a little bit kind of built with that. So it's one offer, but there's different parts of the offer where it's like, okay, the lower level of it, this is the higher level of it. But just getting that down pat, I think it works really well for for business owners themselves because they're able to keep building upon it and it also helps with their clients.

I used to just customize everything. That was the wrong approach. Lemme tell you, because when you tell your customers, Hey, I'm gonna customize everything for you, they think you don't have any direction and it's gonna be confusing. And it's like, okay, I'm the first person who has to go through this.

That's not reassuring. Yeah. But if you say, Hey, I've had 30 people, or 50 or hundred people go through this exact same thing, it's pro, it's reliably produced. These results, here are the testimonials from all the people who have done it. Oh man. That is a game changer.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I did with my Business Development Mastery program.

Right. I just realized there were like six things we needed to focus on, and that's what we teach over and over and over again. It's repeatable, it's dependable, and it works. That's it. That's all there is to it.

Sam Swirsky: And it works. And the weird thing is I think people have some kind of guilt level with it where they're like I gotta keep growing the business and expanding and talk look, the.

The first thing to get right is just your offer. Yeah. And then everything else that you build goes around that. Like you, you don't need to, it, you can increase your prices as much as you kind of see fit, but there's no need to endlessly confuse yourself with having different offerings.

Kelly Kennedy : No. And the idea too is that you are the expert.

You've done it, and you're just teaching something you already know works. That's right. At the end of the day, you don't need to change that up just because it's another year or uh, or the fifth year in. As long as it's still working. Right. Keep getting at it. How do they do that, Sam? If people are listening to this right now and they're like, you know what?

I wanna learn more. I wanna grow my brand on LinkedIn and I wanna hire Sam. You mentioned that you, you're using LinkedIn right now as your webpage. Does that mean they can also schedule their introductory call with you on LinkedIn?

Sam Swirsky: That's right. Yep. I have, you can go right to my profile and click you know, this, I recognize that we're recording a year in the future, but always on my profile, I'll, I'll tell people that you gotta keep it super clear of what people to do can do.

So I have it in my headline, I've got it as my link. I've got it in my bow section. I've got it in the feature so that, because people don't typically read exactly how you want them to read on your LinkedIn page, on your profile. So I have it everywhere so people know how to, how to get ahold of me. So yeah, just reach out.

And if for some reason in the future I have, right now it's free if I have it as paid, send me a message like, Hey, I listened to your podcast a year ago and you said that I could get on a free call and I'll give you a free call.

Kelly Kennedy : Awesome. Awesome. Well, either way, I'm gonna have the links send to all the show posts for this on LinkedIn and on the actual, like the episode notes.

So either way they'll have the link to book that, uh, to book that interview with you. Amazing. Love it. Sam. It's been an honor and a pleasure, man. I love, I love who you are as a person. I love your energy and I really appreciated that you wanted to do this today.

Sam Swirsky: Thank you. And I'll tell you, if I ever get a podcast going myself, I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna watch your episodes so I can learn how to be a good podcast host because you are just crushing it.

Kelly Kennedy : Oh, dude, I appreciate that immensely. I love it. I think that's it. That's the difference. Do you know what makes a good podcast host? They actually love what they're doing.

Sam Swirsky: Yeah, that a hundred percent makes sense.

Kelly Kennedy : Yeah. Amazing. Dude, it's been a pleasure. This has been episode 292 of the Business Development Podcast.

We've been blessed by LinkedIn Rockstar Sam Swirsky. Until next time, we'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.