62 | Sam Browne on Building Personal Brands and Businesses with AI

What does it take to grow from zero to 100K LinkedIn followers organically? In this episode, Audrey Chia talks with Sam Browne, creator, entrepreneur, and coach, about the mix of mindset, experimentation, and creative skills that helped him go from bar gigs to building a portfolio of successful online businesses. 

They also dive into AI’s role in positioning, branding, and content ideation, and why clarity beats complexity when growing your online presence. Perfect for founders ready to level up.

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Transcript

Audrey Chia 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the AI Market Playbook, where we cover actionable frameworks to help you leverage AI and marketing strategies in your business. I'm Audrey Chair, your host, and on today's episode I have with me a guest that I'm genuinely excited to speak with. Sam Brown, a writer creator and serial entrepreneur who has built and skilled multiple businesses over the last decade. Now, Sam founded Fender Band back in 2008. Launched Auckland Weddings in 2012, followed by New Zealand Ventures in 2018, and most recently he's working on trade Mine, a stock market advisory platform. But many of you would know Sam for something else, right? So in 2022, he started posting consistently on LinkedIn. Three years later, he has built an empire, a huge audience of more than a hundred thousand followers, and now coaches, other founders on how to build a personal brand. They actually. Reflects who they are. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Brown 1:01

Thank you. What an intro. Thanks for having me.

Audrey Chia 1:03

I am super excited to have you, and I'm sure our listeners would be pretty curious about your journey thus far. So before being a creator, you started multiple businesses, right? So tell us more about that entrepreneurial journey for you.

Sam Brown 1:17

Sure. Yeah. Um, so as you mentioned, um, my first. Uh, online business of note is find a band. Um, and this was a live music agency that I started thinking about when I was in university myself, uh, studying music and performing until, you know, two o'clock in the morning, three nights a week. Um. We would have people come, we were playing in a local bar, and we would have people come and ask about performing for their 40th birthday or for their wedding or corporate event. And, uh, at the time, this is a long time ago, 2008, uh, there was no one in New Zealand who was, uh, offering this sort of online, um. And I realized that there would probably be good demand for doing that. So I went from just playing in bars myself to starting this online business, uh, which is kind of like Airbnb for live bands. So you go on there, you say the sort of thing you're looking for, and you're presented with all of the options. Um, and so one thing led to another over the, the years that followed, I kept taking the skills. That I learned with my music agency, which I still have. It's been about 17, 18 years now. Um, and I would apply them to new websites. And so I did that with sort of three major websites over the, uh, 15 years or so. And then when I started on LinkedIn, I think that all of the. Skills I built as an online entrepreneur, copywriting design, conversion optimization, um, sales. All of these, all of these generalist entrepreneur skills really came into play with building an audience on LinkedIn, um, and thinking about content like an entrepreneur.

Audrey Chia 3:01

Yes. And wonderful to hear that. Right. I think on LinkedIn you would realize that you need multiple skillset, not just one in order to succeed in order. I'm also curious to know, right, what made you take that leap on and decide to start your LinkedIn journey, given that you've already had quite a number of businesses on your end?

Sam Brown 3:20

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I had for probably the past 10 years, up until when I started on LinkedIn. I had had this strong desire to create an audience around some sort of content at the time. Uh, I started with like a blog, uh, which never really got going. I wanted to help, uh, creative entrepreneurs like myself and tell the, share their stories. Um. And I just kind of ran out of steam with it. I would write, this happened a few times. I would write a few blog posts. They would stay in my Google Drive, you know, they would never see the light of day, and then I would, you know, life would get in the way. Then I tried to do it with a podcast and it happened again. Then I did it a third time with a podcast and I really started to get some traction. I did about six episodes with people who I found on Reddit who had really interesting businesses, but it never went live. So the podcast never made it to the a to the, you know, the podcast, uh, iTunes or whatever. So three, three failed attempts. You know, it was like, it was like people trying to give up smoking or something that they tried, tried try, and then finally it happened. And with LinkedIn, I guess the difference was. The bar was relatively low. Instead of having to set up a website or upload a podcast and go through lots of technical stuff, you could write something, put it on the internet, hit publish, and that is what I did. Um, and so, you know, there was no great master plan of growth. Uh, I think I was in the right place at the right time where LinkedIn was really getting traction as it turns out at that moment. Um, I think I saw. Um, that there was an opportunity there. It was a business platform, and I'm a business person. I'm somebody who's really interested in the sort of psycho psychology of business and all, all of how, how the parts fit together. So I started sharing my entrepreneur stories and it kind of just went from there when I started sometimes including. What I was doing on LinkedIn. So I started teaching LinkedIn strategy. Those posts would do very well. Eventually people started reaching out without me ever saying, I can help you grow on LinkedIn. I had a few people message saying, can you, um, started booking calls and here we are. It's been four years. It, it just grew and grew. Um, and I realized this could be a really, this could be kind of the. Platform for everything I want to do in my career. From here, it's not just about LinkedIn, it's about a personal brand that allows you as an entrepreneur, as a founder. To live a much bigger life than if you don't have a personal brand.

Audrey Chia 6:02

Absolutely. And I think even if you are not a founder or business owner, right? LinkedIn is a incredible platform. So I know a few folks who are doing mid-career changes and they have had, you know, 30 plus years in one industry doing great work, and they come to me and they're like, Audrey, um, I'm looking for another job now. But I'm not sure how to put myself out there. Right? So LinkedIn is that amazing platform for that. So I know you have been on LinkedIn for the past four years, and you've crossed that amazing a hundred K mark. Now, what do you think help you to get from zero to a hundred K and beyond?

Sam Brown 6:38

Yeah, I get asked this quite regularly as though I can say, oh, it's just this, I mean it's, it's like anything that is worth having, um. It took a lot of time. It, it, it was sort of one step at a time, you know, lots and lots of posts. Um, and rather than, I, I did have a few posts, um, like one or two go viral. I did one about the LinkedIn algorithm in late 2022, which was my, by far, my best performer. I think it's had, I don't know, I wanna say 3 million views. Um, and that, that did get me about 10,000 additional followers very quickly. But besides that big jump. It's just been one person at a time, um, over that time. So, you know, if I was starting again today and my goal was getting to a hundred thousand, um, I don't know if I would do it. It was, it's such a lot of work, uh, and it's certainly harder now too, I should say that. I, I think actually the focus now, you know, the, the LinkedIn algorithm is a lot harder than it was, but. Something really interesting about the algorithm now is that even if you have a very small audience, similarly to something like TikTok, it's no longer a barrier to having a lot of eyes on your content. So if you create something really good, let's say you do, uh, a really good infographic that breaks down something in your niche, very, uh, effectively, you could have a hundred thousand views on that with. 500 followers. Um, so yeah, I'm not sure exactly how I'd get back to a hundred thousand. It would be a, it would be a difficult job, that's for sure.

Audrey Chia 8:17

Yes. I think LinkedIn has made it a little bit harder for creators to, you know, build as consistently as before. But like what you said right there is also a lot of opportunity in which now new and emerging creators can also get that visibility. Yeah, and I think one thing that I would say is, um, just because you have more followers doesn't mean you have more business. It is not always absolutely the same. Right? Yeah. Have you also seen that?

Sam Brown 8:42

Yeah. I was thinking about this earlier today. I. I think it is such an easy trap to fall into, to chase that dopamine. You know, I really want a thousand likes on my posts. I'm gonna do this thing that I know everybody will hit. Like, but um, yeah, it's, it's certainly true that creating content for your audience, uh, is. You know, worth much more than those thousand likes you can have. I, I have a post today, I, I did earlier today. It has about 30 likes right now, which I, I knew it wasn't gonna go crazy, but I was a bit disappointed. I thought it would do better than it has. However, I also had a client sign up with me today because they saw that post and they liked it. So the post is worth$5,000 so far, you know, so it's like, what would you rather have?

Audrey Chia 9:28

Yes, yes. And it's really about chasing the right matrix maybe at the right time. So maybe if you're just starting out, you might want to aim for something that gets you, um, maybe more followers or more views just at the start to get the engine ramped up and then Correct. You might have to transit a little, right?

Sam Brown 9:45

Yeah, I think, I mean you, yeah, you're an expert. I forgot I was talking another LinkedIn, uh, expert. Uh, I think it's about choosing some content to do that. Some content to really sell. Um, what you're doing, and I guess the mistake is trying to do everything with every post. Like today's post was purely, uh, kind of building trust, showing personality, um, showing values, and then at the very end there's just a tiny little thing where I say, by the way, if you wanna start working with me in February, here's what you do. But it, but it wasn't a big pushy sales pitch. Whereas other times I might do one where I share. Here's all the results I'm getting from my clients and, um, here's how your life is gonna get better. So a totally different approach. So different content has different jobs as you know. Yeah,

Audrey Chia 10:29

definitely. And I'm so curious, right. Looking back since you've, you said you've run a couple of businesses before and you've actually taken the skill sets from each business and then put it into the new one. So what are some skillset that maybe translated most into, directly into building an audience here?

Sam Brown 10:47

Yeah, great question. Well, one that immediately springs to mind is when someone lands on your website outside of LinkedIn, not your, not your LinkedIn profile, but lands on your business website, you know, you've only got seconds to make that first impression. So what do they see when they arrive there? Are you communicating effectively who you work with? What you offer, um, does your branding suggest that you are professional and maybe you're a little bit higher cost, but it's worth it? Or does it look amateur? Um, is the copy confusing and making it feel like you do eight different things or is it really, really clear? So these kind of principles absolutely show up in content as well. When we think of creators, who we love and why we love them, there's no confusion around what they do or why we enjoy their content. It's not, it's not 12 different things that, that, this is something I often have to say to my clients who are entrepreneurs who have lots of different interests and often will have multiple income streams. I will always be saying to them, that's totally fine, but on your profile in particular, on LinkedIn. We really wanna just have one strong message. This is what I do and this is who I do it for.

Audrey Chia 12:01

And this links us very nicely to the topic of positioning. So we are both writers and I think for us, being able to talk about positioning and helping our clients understand what it is sometimes can be a challenge because most people see content as is. Um, but they don't get the strategy behind it. So for our audience who might be new to this work, they might have heard it before, can you tell us more about what positioning is and how they can get started on LinkedIn?

Sam Brown 12:28

Yeah, sure. So. I think the way to think about positioning for LinkedIn versus the traditional meaning of the word or the, or the, uh, the word as used in a broader marketing sense are two different things. Um, so I use a kind of a simplified version of true positioning for LinkedIn. So it boils down to, for LinkedIn, first off, who exactly do you work with? So who is your target audience? This is gonna be things like where do they live? What do they, what do they do for work? Um, how do they describe themselves? What age bracket are they? Maybe the 10 years, uh, 10 year, 10 year demographic. Um, I dunno if I mentioned income. So what are they earning? And then we get into things like, what are the problems that they're wrestling with? Um, what are the solutions that you have to those problems? What is the proof that the solution that you has have will work for them? Uh, and what do you do differently or maybe the opposite to your competitors?

Audrey Chia 13:32

Yeah, even for my clients, right? Um, sometimes they say Audrey, but we do, you know, training for everyone. And then I ask them, if you do training for everyone, who are you actually surfing? So how would someone come to you if they don't know what you specialize in or what you are better at on LinkedIn? I think being able to do a little bit less. On this platform is sometimes more so for some of your clients. Maybe Sam, you can give us one example of how you help the client work through their positioning. So our listeners have an idea of how do they even think about this abstract type concept and how do they know something that's a bit simpler for this platform?

Sam Brown 14:12

Yeah, sure. So this is a nice segue into your topic of choice. Um. So there's two ways to do this, but the way that I do with my group cohort, so when I work one-on-one with people, we do this kind of manually and we do it through discussion. We look at their past clients and we discuss which of these clients did you get the best result for? And we might literally list them out, you know, of my last 10 clients, these are the three who got the best result, um, what are the commonalities, um, amongst those clients. Then the other thing is. Um, you know, which clients did you most enjoy serving? Who did you feel most aligned with in terms of, um, who they are, what they're trying to achieve? So these are really, really good reference points for who your target market is. Um, but then we use AI as well. So the way that I use AI for this is I created a. Questionnaires similar to what I would do with them if it was me, um, helping them to uncover their positioning. And so the questions I mentioned before are what I do with ai. And then based on the answers to those questions, um, you get a sort of a summary that says this is your positioning. Something that I found worked really well with this was to ask, ask these questions I mentioned. And then to also give the AI tool, I don't think it really matters too much, which one I use Chatt PT, which I know is a bit basic, but that's what I use. Um, and I give the AI leeway to ask follow up questions so I don't just ask it to use the questions I've given it. You're allowed to go deeper to get more clarity. So I say something like, you can ask up to 15 questions and you can ask follow up questions for more context. So you end up going down these interesting rabbit holes where the AI gets a lot of context around who you work with, and then it's, it's a really nice experience for the, uh, for the cohort member to get this nice one page summary. This is who you are working with, this is your positioning.

Audrey Chia 16:12

Yeah. And I love that you are using AI to ask them questions because in that process, right, sometimes the clients themselves, they know. What they need to say. But it's just noted in, you know, in like a huge bundle of, of, of, um, like a mess, right? Yes. So how do you ask them questions to tease the insights out and then to form that perfect line and unbundle, you know, that whole mess. So I think for myself also, being able to use ai, um, and feeding it with the right instructions is very important. I think you also gave AI your personal framework, which is why it's able to come up with a better output.

Sam Brown 16:53

Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah.

Audrey Chia 16:55

Yeah. And I'm also, um, wondering, can AI be used in other parts of the process? Do you use AI and design and maybe a client management? How else are you using AI in your business?

Sam Brown 17:09

I probably should be using it for client management. I'm not at this point. Um, the. The one way I use it in the creative process, um, is I use mid journey for imagery that I use on social media. Um, so I would really like to have more real world photography of myself. I don't know, traveling through different cities, but I don't, it's not something that I have a lot of. Um, it's sort of like a focus for this year. So I had this dilemma where I thought, you know, I need, I need a variety of, um. Imagery for social. I can't just show up with my ideas, uh, and just do text posts all the time. Some people do, but I think you are putting yourself at a big disadvantage doing that. So then this tool came out in, I wanna say 2023 mid journey. So mid journey is, um, and art and now, uh, sorry, a like an image and now video AI generator. And I don't, I don't know if it's. If it's sort of considered the best of the best, but it does have a very passionate community because it's very creative as far as AI art generators go. So the imagery you get is much better than something like what chat GBT produces, for example. Um, and it's very, the developers have been very proactive with listening to the community and it, it just feels like there's a very creative group of people who are. Using it as part of their, um, overall workflow. So photographers, for example, um, a friend of mine actually runs a photography studio and he was very busy and then one day he was not because all of these brands started shifting to ai. So he is someone I know who has really mastered mid journey and actually become an AI influencer in New Zealand. I'll have to put'em in touch with you. Um, so their whole business model is. You know, relying on Midjourney and his mastery of Midjourney to create, uh, product imagery for their clients. So that's for me, the ma The, the way I use it is I tried to develop a, uh, signature imagery style, um, yes, where I reference a handful of different artists as well as prompts like. Um, you know, vector illustration, I might say. I want it to be minimalist. I give it some color, some hex codes, um, to use as kind of like color bases. So as a result, you know, I have, I have this kind of master prompt that I use, and I, and I always get a fairly consistent outcome. So I will change the subject, but uh, the actual style of art that I get is very consistent, and that's been great for LinkedIn. I, I think for any social, it could be a great way for people to. Carve out a signature look so that when people see your content, they instantly know, oh, yep, that is Audrey's stuff. I know that that design.

Audrey Chia 20:07

Yes, I think a lot of AI tools have lowered the barrier of entry, you know, to create something or to become a creator. So in the past, um, I too struggled with like getting images and visuals out, and it's so hard because I don't have the right words, uh, or the right terms to use. Right? Um, but at the same time, I think AI is becoming a lot more accessible, especially with tools like Geminis Nano Banana, where it's more, you know, natural language speaking and you don't necessarily need. Very technical terms for it. Um, so that definitely has helped. When it comes to mid journey, do you think that people need to master a certain skill set or is it pretty accessible for everyone?

Sam Brown 20:47

There was a time where it was relatively challenging, but something that Mid Journey introduced quite recently, which has been a very positive change for inspiration, is they have an explore page, which is essentially like Pinterest, so you can see, um. Imagery created by other people that, I'm not actually sure how it makes it to the explore page, but there must be something where it's like a, an algorithm that only the best stuff is getting surfaced. So you could say, show me all of the, uh, imagery that was created today with Hyperrealistic photography, and it will give you that, and you'll be able to then see the prompts that people used. So you'll see, you know, rather than trying to guess, well, what would it look like if I asked for a, uh, nick on camera with this lens at this time of day in this city? Um, you start seeing the result. So it's great because it's just endless inspiration and so I've, I've found a lot of things that I like to do through seeing what more skilled people than me are doing to create their own imagery.

Audrey Chia 21:48

Yes. And I also think that the reason why you can create those is also because you have a vision, right? I think one mistake that I see most people make is when they use AI tools, whether it's for a copy or a design, they don't have an end goal in mind. So if that happens, you tend to spiral and then you just go like a hamster on the wheel trying to figure out what you want, but you don't know what you want. So AI is gonna give you so many options, and then you might be a bit stuck in the process.

Sam Brown 22:15

Yes. Yes, I could. I could imagine that. I think when I first started using Midjourney, I felt like that, I felt like, well, what, what shall I create? You know? Um, but yeah, you're right, like having a practical use for it. I, I had to create this image for today's post. I would read through the post and think, I try and treat it like a, like a, an illustration that you might see in, you know, a, a, a high-end magazine, something like The Atlantic, if they. If they employed a professional illustrator, what sort of image would they use to go with the article? That's kinda my thought process. That's what I'm shooting for. Not that I'm getting there, but um, so it creates something that supports and accompanies the copy. Um, and obviously as well, a big part of it is stopping the scroll. I want to grab your attention in the newsfeed, create enough curiosity that you think I will start reading this and see if I like it.

Audrey Chia 23:12

Definitely. And do you think that AI is going to change, you know, the roles or replace the roles of either writers or designers or even creatives? Um, I ask this question a lot because many of the peers that I know are in. Creative agencies and right now there is a massive wave of change that's happening. Um, and many people are realizing that, hey, their skill sets are not as relevant. So from where you're based in. Right. Have you also noticed, uh, AI replacing some parts of certain workflows?

Sam Brown 23:46

I think we're in an interesting time, uh, where this is the question, right? Like, are we, are we going, are our mu musician's gonna be replaced with AI music? And are our movies gonna be made by ai? I think it's a very big, no, huge, there's just no way. I think these tools are gonna be great for, if we use the example of, uh, SUNO, I think it's called Suno, um, for creating music. Um, you know, my background is as a musician, so I've, I've recorded two album written and recorded two albums as a rock musician. Had songs on the radio in New Zealand, these sorts of things. So I, I look at the outputs of Suno with great interest. It's quite amazing what it can do, but also it's not what a human can do and it kind of can't ever be what a human can do. So maybe. In, in the case of AI music, you get this kind of by the numbers generic piece of music that on the surface sounds like a human band, and some aspects of it are very polished. For example, the singing will be perfectly in tune, as an example, but to me the use case for that would be to get ideas that I would then use to actually make music. So. I think that that's probably a good example of how all creatives will use these things. When you compare the work of a talented experience, creative of any discipline with the AI equivalent, it's not even close. You know, it's all of those little fine details. Now, will that be the case 10 years from now? I don't know. I, I don't know if the. I if the ai, this is not, you know, this is not my area of specialty, but I dunno if the AI will just con, continue to evolve to, to the point where it's totally, um, indistinguishable. But we're certainly nowhere near that situation now. And I, uh, if I had to guess, I would think we're not gonna get there. There, it would just, you, you're basically asking it to replicate a human brain. And I don't think that's gonna be happening anytime soon.

Audrey Chia 25:52

Yes. It's very interesting you said that, right? Because, um, as much as AI can create a polished, you know, work of art, sometimes it's just missing a, an additional element of that human touch, like that creative vision or just when you read or you watch or you listen to something, it's just missing a little bit of rawness and it's hard to put it into words until you look at it yourself. Even when I'm on Instagram nowadays, I see a lot of AI generated videos and it. You know, flooding the web, right? But there is an element of, hey, you know, this doesn't feel quite raw or human. It's still, there's still a little something off about it. And I think that's that special human touch.

Sam Brown 26:34

Yes, completely agree. I think it's, I, it's been interesting on LinkedIn seeing the proliferation of people using AI to write. Um, somebody who I really like her writing admitted recently that she's using AI heavily to write. And honestly, it was a bit of a jarring moment that I didn't think that she was, you know, sometimes you can really tell there are certain terms of phrases or stylistic choices that are very ai, and she was obviously removing those from her writing and starting with interesting ideas as well. After I knew that she was using ai, I found it very hard to continue to read her content because I was thinking, I, I don't wanna read an AI output. I want the, I want to read what the human is saying. So, you know, if I'd never known, I guess I would've kept reading it. And

Audrey Chia 27:25

yes,

Sam Brown 27:26

that's an interesting situation where you genuinely are unaware. However, I think most of the time it's abundantly obvious that people are using AI to write. And I think it's a costly thing to do for your reputation if it's very obvious that you're just sharing, uh, slightly edited AI outputs, but you're presenting it as your work, as your thoughts and your writing. I think that that could be reputationally damaging, I think.

Audrey Chia 27:53

Hmm, interesting. And how do you, your clients, you know, navigate that? Because I know you use a lot of AI as well. Do you advise them to use AI or do you advise them to use it only for ideation?

Sam Brown 28:04

Exactly, yes. I probably sound a bit hypocritical. I specifically encourage them not to use it for writing. Um, there is a, a growing body of evidence that. If you are outsourcing your actual writing and your sort of, um, creative work to ai, to ai, uh, you are actually losing the ability to do it yourself without help. Um, so with that in mind, I'm very careful to not succumb to that temptation. I really, this is a value of mine though. You know, I, I really value writing the skill of writing effective communication. Including your unique voice in your writing, and obviously with ai you're gonna lose that you're, and it even, even if you have the absolute best intentions to keep as much of yourself in it as possible. Yeah, inevitably the quality will degrade. So, you know, to answer your question, yeah, we use AI a lot around the structural stuff, basically answering questions. It's almost like getting another person in the room to bounce ideas off. Um, I shared about how we do the positioning. We do that with personal brand as well, where it asks lots of questions around, um, what kind of person were you when you grow up, what do you do? For the fun of it that you don't make any money from, but you just really enjoy, I think these sorts of questions to try and get a, try and get a kind of an outside view of who you are and what you feel like to spend time with. Um, and then I do use it a lot for, um, idea generation. So basically post titles one for me might be, um, how to upgrade your LinkedIn profile and generate 10,000 plus per month on LinkedIn. So that's not writing the post for me. I'm gonna then go away and write it. But it's nice to have that starting point, especially for my clients. I, I do a lot of that, you know, on my own, but the big challenge is, you know, with, with clients early on, is just getting them to start posting, just to start building that muscle, be comfortable with sharing ideas in public. Um, so a lot of the AI prompts I've created are centered around that, that problem.

Audrey Chia 30:11

I think AI is a very good tool when it comes to helping people to, um. Figure out how to get started and at least get the gears going, right? Because

Sam Brown 30:19

right.

Audrey Chia 30:20

Sometimes the writer's vote is real for many people. Uh, and then they say, I don't know what to write about. I don't know what to post about. I have nothing interesting to say. So maybe let's also talk about some common founder challenges and problems. If someone comes to you and say, but Sam, you know, there's nothing interesting about me, or I don't know what to post, what are some quick ideas you can give them?

Sam Brown 30:40

I had somebody say that to me recently. She said, uh. You know, we were talking about different people in the cohort and the interesting things they were doing. One of them was an ultra runner. She ran ultra marathons. Um, one of them had, um, ridden his bike from London to Japan. Uh, a client of mine is a trapeze artist on the weekend. So they had all these amazing stories, um, and she was sort of saying, well, I don't have anything interesting. And we eventually. I mean, I don't believe that. I don't, uh, unless you're sitting in front of the tv, you know, eight hours a day and you literally don't do anything else, you probably do have some things that are really interesting about you, but you are too close to them. And this is actually a, where AI can be helpful, where the questions I have my clients answer around personal brand are about kind of prodding that idea of like, well, you know, what do you do that not everybody does? In the case of this person, it turned out to be, she was very passionate about camping. So she had all these stories about camping that she had done. Then she went camping and we ended up, uh, she ended up creating a post. Um, she went camping with her husband and her 1-year-old baby. They had all kinds of problems'cause they had this baby and it was like, that's great. It's such a good, it's such a good example I think, of sharing who you are sharing, uh, your life on, on social media in a way that is not oversharing or uh, performative. This is just who this person is. So when she's sharing that she's, she enjoys camping and that she has a one-year-old baby, all of a sudden a lot of people in her audience get a new perspective on her and the types of type of person that she is, she's probably somebody who's willing to, uh, be in a little bit of discomfort, for example, in order to enjoy a sunrise in a beautiful place. Not everybody is willing to do that. So yeah, AI can be quite helpful for. Getting people out of their own heads and saying, this is what's interesting and special about you.

Audrey Chia 32:38

Yeah, and I think that LinkedIn is both a professional platform, but it's also a personal platform. So sometimes the personal stories actually give you a more holistic view of an individual. Otherwise you're just be. You as a brand. Um, and there is not that much of a difference, but how do then, you know, founders then balance that personal part with expertise, right? So how do they showcase their expertise and authority, um, while talking about their personal stories?

Sam Brown 33:05

Yep. Yep. So this is a classic, uh, conundrum and it's actually. It's actually kind of a personal choice. So I can think of some creators whose content I really like who never share any personal stories. I don't know one personal thing about them, but their practical content, this is how you do this thing, is so useful and so well written that I still enjoy their content. However, I'm, I tend to enjoy more when somebody is combining. Here is what I'm doing in business and how you can benefit from my. Uh, expertise with, here's how I got here. This is the person that I am, this is, here are the things that I've been working on. Here are my failures that I had to go through in order to get to this place. So, if I use myself as an example, I try and include stories about, uh, building my, you know, small online businesses over the 15 years prior to starting on LinkedIn, because it gives context. It says This is a person who. Doesn't just follow the, uh, standard path through life of going from job to job, uh, staying in the corporate world, playing it safe. Um, I left the corporate world when I was about 25. Um, I, I recorded the albums I mentioned before. That's the other thing I try and include. So I say, look, I have this background in music. I performed as a professional musician for 10 years. So all of a sudden when I share these things, I'm not competing with other LinkedIn coaches. Head on. Now I become more and more just this one person, this guy in New Zealand who did these things. And so if you are a certain type of person, if you are a founder and you're running a six figure business or a or a low seven figure business, all of a sudden we have a lot in common. And you may be thinking. If I'm gonna work with anybody for LinkedIn, I'm gonna work with this guy. And that's the point of personal content, content. It changes the conversation so much. If I was just purely sharing, you know, here's how to write better hooks, and here's how to create a content strategy. I'm competing with 10,000 other people. And so it has a very practical, practical purpose, no matter who you are, to make you memorable in other people's minds. So, you know, I call my method the Mindshare method. Because all of a sudden you start occupying people's mind when they think of you. They think of all these stories that surround you.

Audrey Chia 35:26

Yes. I think also one thing that happens in the workplace that we are taking online is that likability factor, right? So at work, of course, there'll be peers that you know you might be more comfortable working with because of their personality, of their value system, of the stories that you've shared with them. So on LinkedIn, this becomes your platform to amplify all those stories. So instead of. One-to-one relationship is a one to many relationship, and that really helps to build character, um, both online and offline. So, Sam, I know you talked about building so many businesses. If there is one, you know, key lesson or takeaway that you can share with founders from your 15 plus years of, you know, testing, trying, succeeding, what would that one lesson be?

Sam Brown 36:12

One lesson. Hmm. Okay. The thing that immediately springs to mind is. Uh, don't play too small. So with my businesses, especially when I was younger, I set my sights fairly low because I didn't believe that I was capable of doing something bigger. And I look back in hindsight and think that was a very self-imposed limit. Um, when I look at young founders on LinkedIn in their twenties or maybe early thirties. And they've, um, you know, unlocked 10 or 20 or 50 million in VC funding, and they are building their businesses with no regard for the fact that they're young and that they haven't spent 30 years in business. I realize that this is something that's available to almost anyone, not anyone, but almost anyone. And this certainly probably would've been available to me. I mean, you only know what you know, and I didn't realize. At that time how, um, investment in businesses work that VC was something that existed that that angel investors. So I did it all bootstrapped, and that's a very difficult way to do it. But I also built businesses that had no possible way of growing to be 20 million, 50 million per year businesses. So the business I'm working on right now, uh, is a stock market app. And the potential business is global. You know, this is a business we'll be able to build to, let's say, eight figures and potentially beyond. It's the first time that I've done that with a business. Um, so that would be the one. It would be, you know, when you decide on the business you want to build, build something big, shoot for something big, maybe you won't make it, but at least there was the possibility. Don't build something that has no possibility of growing into something. That you might, you know, build for the next 20 years and build into something really big.

Audrey Chia 38:08

Oh, I, I love that. So for your other business that you're currently working on, is it also with a co-founder? Are you raising funds? Tell us a bit more about that.'cause I'm sure people will be interested.

Sam Brown 38:19

Sure, yeah. I do have a co-founder, uh, Jorge. Uh, Jorge and I met about four years ago. He is a brilliant, uh, financial genius, and so he built, uh, this tool, so we haven't launched it yet, so unfortunately there's nowhere I can send people, but it's called Trade Mind, and he created it for himself as a veteran of the financial markets. Um, he, he's worked, uh, in South America and in Australia on, uh, trading floors. So literally the kind of Wall Street, you know, buy, buy, buy, sell, sell, sell. Yes. Um, and then he built this tool to make it much easier for himself to. Make better decisions around buy, sell, and hold for different companies that he was interested in. So the way that Trade mine works now is each day you get an email letting you know for any companies you're interested in, let's say you've added to your watch list, uh, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. So every day after the market closes, you'll get an email saying, here's what you should do with Google, uh, Facebook and Amazon. You should hold this one, sell this one, and buy. And so those signals change according to what's happening in the market. So it's about reducing the, uh, massive time investment required to be reading charts and then making decisions. Um, so yeah, so that's what we're working on.

Audrey Chia 39:35

Oh, super exciting. Um, and I know that with all your experience as well as combining it with the expertise of your partner, it's gonna be a super exciting next chapter for you. So Sam, thank you so much for your time. Maybe as one last takeaway for our audience, what is one thing someone can do to get started on their LinkedIn journey today?

Sam Brown 39:56

Just post something. That's what I would say. I love that most people don't do it. As you know, most people don't post and. If you are someone, no matter how you do it, no matter how imperfectly it is, no matter if it's messy, if it's got typos, if it's just a text post, if you do that, you are ahead of 99% of people. So that's what I would say.

Audrey Chia 40:18

Awesome. So Sam Brown, thank you for joining us. Where can our listeners find you and who should reach out to you?

Sam Brown 40:25

Yeah, so the best place to find me would be LinkedIn. So it's Sam Brown with an e. Um, and if you, if you search in LinkedIn for me, there's a little dinosaur next to my name so that I'll make it easy to know which Sam Brown, there's a few of us out there. Um, and yeah, from there just send me a message if you'd like to learn about working with me. The best people to work with me are, are coaches, consultants, and agency owners.

Audrey Chia 40:48

Awesome. Thank you Sam again for sharing your insights. All the best for your new platform launch, and thank you folks for tuning in. Don't forget to hit the bell for more actionable AI and marketing insights. We'll see you next week. Take care.