Why Most Executives Don't Know They Have a LinkedIn Problem with Leslie Hughes.

Michael welcomes LinkedIn Top Voice, trainer, and author Leslie Hughes to discuss how LinkedIn has evolved from a job-search site into a networking and thought leadership platform, and why many executives underestimate their need for an active presence. Hughes explains that executives are forward-facing brand ambassadors and should engage with their teams, celebrate wins, build quality networks, and publish consistently (even 20 minutes a week). They cover semantic search, profile essentials (professional headshot, banner, 220-character headline, and a first-person About section with quantifiable results), balancing authenticity with professionalism, and overcoming fears of “bragging” through servant leadership framing. Hughes shares examples of executives Dwayne Green (Aviva Investors) and Charles Brown (LifeLabs), addresses AI caution in compliance-heavy industries, and encourages proactive LinkedIn investment before layoffs force reactive catch-up.

Timestamps:
00:24  Welcome
01:18  Meet Leslie Hughes
02:515  LinkedIn Evolution for Execs
03:02  The Hidden LinkedIn Problem
04:41  Proactive vs Reactive Wake Up
06:06  CEO Examples Done Right
07:51  Time and Posting Cadence
09:30  Semantic Search and Discovery
11:55  Gen X Profile Refresh
13:32  Profile Essentials That Convert
16:17  Human Stories vs Bragging
19:41  Thought Leadership and Imposter Syndrome
22:36  AI Caution and Digital Twins
25:34  Overwhelm and Simple Systems
27:57  Guardrails and Brand Safety
29:42  Top Executive Takeaways
31:33  Closing Question MrBeast
34:22  Where to Find Leslie
35:18  Closing

Connect with Leslie:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-hughes/
https://punchmedia.ca

Michael's National Workforce Study on Change Management:
https://www.michaeljlopez.coach/research

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Top Voice Podcast, where each week I sit down with leading voices in business, leadership, and transformation to unpack the issues that matter most. Together, we explore fresh insights, bold ideas, and real-world stories from people shaping how we think about change, culture, and what's possible. Hello and welcome to the Top Voice podcast. I am excited to have Leslie Hughes with us today to one two punch from our conversation on last week about the creator economy. We're going to talk about LinkedIn and executives and why LinkedIn executives may not know they have a problem. And I can share my own stories about this. Not that I think I have a problem, but I know I've been through this journey and I'm going to we're going to talk a little bit about it. So, Leslie, I'm going to give you a chance to introduce yourself. Before we do that, for those of you who are tuning in on the live feed, please do leave a question or a comment. We love to take those. It really adds to the conversation. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, be sure to hit the subscribe button when you're done. Leslie, let's get into this conversation. I've been excited to have it for quite some time. Before we do, tell us who you are, tell us what you do. This is always a tough question for me, and yet I teach this for a living. Uh, is I am a LinkedIn top voice, uh, a LinkedIn trainer, a LinkedIn profile writer, and talk about how to stand out with your brand out. I am the author of a book called Create, Connect, Convert. And I've appeared on national television in Canada mostly, and I'm uh also a public speaker. So that's just a few of the different hats that I wear. Yeah, yeah, that well, those are those are wonderful hats. And when we first met and started talking about this, I was excited because I think your perspective and your experience over the arc of this personal branding journey. We talk a lot about personal branding on this show, but I think we're going to talk a little bit differently about it today. So, so let's maybe first get into this discussion about LinkedIn, because I think we're we're live right now on LinkedIn and YouTube, but this podcast will go everywhere. Let's talk maybe about the evolution of LinkedIn as a personal branding platform and how executives have either evolved with it or maybe not. Well, it's interesting now in 2026 to see where uh executives have evolved because originally, way, way back, actually, LinkedIn was founded before Facebook, if you can believe it. It's a little engine that could. So it's been around for a long time. Uh, and most people thought of it as being the job prospecting platform. And still to this day, I find that people still will talk to me about, well, I'm not looking for a job, so do I really need to be on LinkedIn? But it really has evolved to become more of a networking platform and also a thought leadership or uh, you know, brand um presence platform as well. Yeah. So when it comes to executives, then what does that mean for you you've said this, and it's it's it's it's the name of this show, why most executives don't think they have a LinkedIn problem. Uh let's talk about what that problem is that they don't think they have and what is the actual problem that they have. So this is where I get really passionate uh because I do a lot working, I work a lot with uh executives to help optimize their presence. And so the problem they don't think that they have, uh they don't think that they are looking for a job, so they don't think that they need to be on LinkedIn. Where I am a big champion of really empowering executives to recognize that they are the forward-facing brand ambassador for their organization. And so it really is incumbent upon them to have a presence not only on there from their own brand presence perspective, but also to be networking and engaging and socializing online with their team members. So celebrating their wins, sharing the company wins, those kinds of things help to showcase the organization in better light when the the executives are actually involved in the conversation. Yeah. I've seen so many people across the spectrum of a CEO that's maybe very well respected and known. They have 500 connections and some that have 100,000 and they're very active. What where's the inflection point? Like what causes somebody as an executive to start to open up to that realization? Is it a moment? Is it an expert like you? Is it a crisis? What how do you get into this self-awareness where you realize you're you're not just the leader of the company, but a brand ambassador as well? Well, I have had some uh executives come to me proactively, recognizing that they want to have that digital presence that really showcases who they are, what they do, how they help, and their their role in the organization, which I think is great when they come as a proactive person who's not necessarily job prospecting, but really recognize the role that LinkedIn has to play in sort of the ecosystem, in the working ecosystem. Unfortunately, a lot of them come to me reactively where they have just been laid off or there's downsizing that is happening. And then they come to me and they say, Well, I really didn't think I was going to be job prospecting, and I haven't updated my LinkedIn profile because I haven't needed a job for the past 20 years. And then some of them, after 20 years at the same organization, have been let go. So I don't like to it, it sort of makes me feel like when they're coming to me reactively, we have to play catch up at that point, as opposed to the ones that have invested in their presence and have continued to create a presence for themselves and make connections and like in like any kind of investment, it compounds over time. And so I'd rather them come proactively to me instead of reactively. Yeah. I I would say I we don't have to call it any names, but I would love to get your perspective of maybe some. Well, maybe we should call it names for the ones that you think CEOs there that are doing this really well. Are there some that are really shining examples of this transition to personal presence becoming more of what they feature? Uh, I can give you two names that I've already had permission that I can share that I have worked with them. Um, and so one of them is Dwayne Green, who's now the president of Aviva Investors. And so Dwayne came to me proactively uh talking to talk to me about optimizing his presence when he was at Franklin Templeton, Canada. And we worked together to collaborate and optimize his profile. And he is a great representative of his organization again because he did this proactively and because I see him involved with his team members and he's not delegating it to a marketing person or an assistant. I know for sure that he's actively managing his own account. So he is definitely one uh, and so that's uh Aviva Investors in Canada. And the other one that I've worked with in Canada specifically is also his name is Charles Brown, and he uh is the CEO of an organization called Life Labs here in Canada. And that is a an organization that um if I can he used to be with like Rogers and with a bunch of other different organizations. And Life Labs is about um blood collections, I think. It's uh it's a it's a national organization where if you need to go and get your blood tested, it's an organization that helps support um obtaining blood samples and things like that. So he that both of those gentlemen, um great to uh they're really great to work with because they really have this sort of servant leadership approach to the way that they lead. And so, and we can get into this a little bit, but both of them didn't want to seem too bragging. I think that's a big fear for a lot of uh people, not just executives, is coming across like I don't want people to feel like I'm bragging on my profile. And so that sort of humble servant leadership approach and also leaning into the value that they're bringing with telling people about all of their accomplishments as well. And so I helped them kind of navigate around that. Yeah. There's there's two things in there I want to get into because you mentioned time, and that is a big element of this. And I think there's the sharing of personal background experience, successes, bragging, how do I come across authentically? How do I show who I really am? And the time factor, both I'm running my own account, and I know a lot of people that don't run their own account, but am I doing that? And then I'm gonna tell a funny story in a minute, but then I think there's there's a perception sometimes of like, how come you're not running the company? Why are you messing around on LinkedIn? How do you how do we balance that, right? What's the right element or you know, the right spectrum there to be on? Because I think so many people come at this with some pretty biased beliefs potentially. That's a great question. And having a presence is important, not just a profile, but publishing is key because how else are people going to find you if you're not publishing content? But you're right, we don't have unlimited time in the day to be doing these things. Um, so my recommendation is if you can publish once a week and have a cadence of that of committing to once a week, that's a great, that should be a great week. Not everybody can sustain that because again, they are working, you know, in the business, on the business, as opposed to promoting what's going on in their organization. But I think um quality matters more than quantity. Ideally, the LinkedIn algorithm will does love to have a cadence of I consistent showing up and and engaging. Um, but I think really as long as it's quality content and not just fluff and meh is so much better. Yeah. That let's talk about the algorithm because I that was gonna be my next question. You you and you just hit on this because I think this is something that came up in our conversation last week. So, how how has LinkedIn evolved? I I know it's moved to semantic search. For those of us who don't know, pretend I don't know what that means. Let's define semantic search. And then what does that change for how we should show up, if whether you're an executive or not? The way that the LinkedIn algorithm used to be or is transitioning away from is a keyword-based search, where you would look for one or two keywords and try to find someone that way. So the semantic-based search now, you'll see at the very top bar, it'll say, I'm looking for. And so the search bar is now asking you to put in more sort of long tail explanation. I'm looking for a financial advisor, advisor who lives in Toronto or whatever it is, uh, the the algorithm is asking us sort of to go long tail as if we would go into a Google search. And so that is going to uncover different different keywords in one's profile if you're optimized for the algorithm. I I got added to this, there's this new thing called cross-check. I don't know if you know what that is. I got added, it's some, it's some new, I can't quite figure it out, but it's some kind of new search thing. I think it's tied to this. So not that that matters, but so what does that mean in terms of how I, if I'm an executive that's never posted or I need to catch up, or I'm looking for a new role, or I'm just trying to be a better ambassador, what does that mean for what I should be doing inside the platform? It's a really good question. I've thought about this because some of it doesn't really matter. Because if how often are people going, I'm looking for a CFO who lives in California? How many people are doing that kind of a semantic-based search? Not too many. More importantly on LinkedIn, it's finding your network. It's finding your community and finding your network and building that network is far more important than sort of almost being foundable, if that's even a word. Um, you want to be indexed. You want the pro you want the you want the algorithm to index you and find you. But more importantly, opportunities are found sort of within the either the hidden job market or the things that aren't being published. Because people are probably 80% of opportunities are found and they're never even posted. So that it brings up an interesting, I guess, conversation for me. I think about let's just talk about the bio and uh, you know, a lot of executives, let's let's let's jump into the Gen X category because I think that's I think we're in the same category. I'm I'm 53, so just turned 53. So uh I have a different LinkedIn profile, but let's pretend I'm in there's a there's a cohort of people that grew up before all of this and thought, well, let me start with my resume. I have a bio that's on the corporate website, let me just drop that into my profile and kind of leave it. What what is what's sufficient now in terms of what I should be describing myself as, talking about, updating? Because I think that, and this is some research that just came out in the study that people can see behind me. You know, a lot of Gen X leaders have kind of atrophied in place a little bit. And I it's probably a great opportunity for you as a business. But what is that, what does that mean for what I should be populating in terms of just my profile and about me and all that? Well, I could talk for three hours just on how to optimize the profile alone. And so I do my best to keep it simple. And you're right, a lot of people, Gen X, I'm one of the I'm a Gen X person myself, and I do find that a lot of leaders that are in our demographic are just looking to age out and retire. And they say they'll say to me, I just, I just want to just you just retire and just want to cruise comfortably into retirement, and I don't need to worry about my LinkedIn profile. Okay, we'll see about that. Uh, because some of them want board board seats and sort of things like that after when they retire and they're not thinking about that opportunity. But if we were to narrow down what the the key aspects of really building a robust, robust profile, it starts with the top down. And so if there's nothing else that one does on their profile, I always say to have a great headshot. That's the first place people look is the headshot and then that cover banner image that sits in behind someone's headshot. Uh, the headshot should be smiling, looking at the camera. It is it is so surprising to me how few people have professional headshots where they're smiling and looking into the camera. I've seen everything from um a lot of international people have very serious profiles because they believe it's more formal. I have seen even people with no shirts on, if you can believe it, Michael. Uh yes. And so my students at the college I used to teach at would say, Well, what if you're a bodybuilder and that's your brand? I said, But would you show up to a would you show up to a meeting all lubed up in a speedo? Probably not. You'd probably show up in a business suit or some kind of business attire. So it is the business network after all. Show up with some clothes on. Um, so the photo, the headline after your name, the headline is a great piece of real estate where it is your unique value proposition. And you had 220 characters to tell people who you are, what you do, and how you help. And that is indexed by the algorithm. And then the about section is 2,600 characters. That is your bio meets your resume, meets your elevator pitch, where I believe it should be written in first person, uh, focusing at the very top with some kind of hook that lets people in and gets people to click on the see more uh button so that they can see more of your profile. And a good story is a good story, uh, but really include the quantifiable results about what you do and how you uniquely do this. And I think that that's what most people are missing out on. They can have a bio that sounds like everybody else out there, and especially with artificial intelligence, there's a lot of AI slop out there. So, how do you uniquely tell your story? How are you a unicorn? How are you different? And I help work with people to get over those brags of those fears of bragging and help reframe the story so that it's it sounds like they're coming from a place of service as opposed as opposed to being really fancy. Yeah, yeah. I I know that I have one of the things I would add to your recommendation, you're the expert. I guess I'm I've just done it a lot because I've been working in this space, is you're probably going to do it 10 times before you find something that really fits with what makes sense for you. And I think people in our generation, executives who have maybe been in the same role for a long time, it's hard to go back and think about all those things. You work at one company, you look at the most recent story and try to work backwards. So I think there's real value from a learning perspective of putting yourself out there and getting some feedback. But that opens up, I think, another window, which is the vulnerability of putting yourself out there. And maybe I was gonna tell you a funny story. Excuse me. I saw a post from someone the other day, and he posted a screenshot of one of his LinkedIn comments. And it said it was from someone, I the name was blocked out, who was the CFO, and he said, So-and-so, nobody cares about your personal life stories or updates or this and that. This is a professional network place. I've muted your your posts in the future. It was very aggressive, and and I think the guy just needed a hug. I'm not sure what it was, but the hilarious part of it is in this guy's profile, he had CFO slash father slash husband. Well, if it's this not a personal place, maybe take the husband and father off. So clearly there's space in here to share more about who you are. Where's that balance? Where's that threshold for most people? Is it the same for everyone? Is it depend? It does depend. I at first I was wholly against putting things like dog lover in my headline, right? I just thought, like, really, is this where we're sharing this space and we're sharing this kind of information in this space? This is the professional network. And then I've reversed my thinking on this because we are humans, right? We're humans connecting with other humans. And for some reason, there seems to be like a psychological block that when we go online, that we're just meant to be these robotic figures. And so now I think what also, so there's two parts is we're connecting human to human and human stories matter. And those are the ones that are actually gaining most traction when people are sharing their experiences online. Is this a professional, is it professional network? Absolutely, right? This is what we're here. We're here to invest time and not waste time. But I think when I see people that are giving back to the community, when I see people that are volunteering, or um I'm a I'm a blood donor recipient. So I am a big champion when people donate blood. I want to say thank you. I people like you have saved my literally saved my life. So thank you so much for doing those kinds of things. Is that professional? No. But are they human? Am I a human? Absolutely. So I think as long as you are willing to be a little bit vulnerable in that way. And then from the other perspective, can you give things on your profile that will help to break the ice with other people? How can we, you know, again, we're connecting human to human. So is there something that is kind of fun that you like to do in your non-working hours? For example, I was working with one client who said, when I'm not working, I'm on the hunt for New York City's best burger. Or there's, you know, I love to do triathlons, or I like I live in Canada. So, you know, I love to, I beat myself up every year because I cheer on for the maple leaves and they constantly lose. So you can have fun and be a little playful with some of your non-working activities. So I think the person needs to settle down, quite frankly, if they're, you know, giving somebody slack because they were having a proud papa moment or something. Yeah. Well, it he he screenshotted it and put it on blast, and the comments were out of control with everyone kind of pushing back. Excuse me. Um we talked a bit about the personal side. And maybe just as an aside, to this day, the best performing post I've ever had was the picture of my twins being born uh seven months ago. By by every measure, it was it blew everything else out of the water. And so I think it really is true. If you want to go viral, just babies, kittens, puppies, all of that stuff is really, really good. Let's move away from the personal and talk about thought leadership because I know that this is a big part of the personal branding story. And a lot of executives have deep experience, deep perspective, deep background. But there, I think there can be some hesitancy to share what you know transparently, deeply, offering up solutions, answers. How do you coach people on that? What again, what's the right balance there? Well, the interesting thing, and the first thing that comes to mind is thinking about all of the junior people coming on board and looking to those senior executives as if they're living in sort of a glass castle. So let me just reverse engineer that for a second because you might need to remind me of the question to come back to it, because my brain is like recognizing I want to tell young people that are starting out that almost every senior executive that I've ever worked with has transparently told me that they all have imposter syndrome, that they all figured, because again, I'm in Gen Z. So I figured at this age I would have it all figured out. And then I look to my peers and we go, we still haven't got it figured out yet. So I say that to young people coming up because I think there's a lot of fear of reaching out or communicating with senior executives and talking to them. They see them in the hall. I used to be that person as well. And so now I just like to share that with the sort of the next generation coming through the ranks. Um your question about senior executives sort of leaning into their expertise. This is where they can really shine as someone who's had experience over the years of bestowing some of these lessons learned to the next generation. It is a little bit of a humble brag to be like, these are the obstacles I've overcome, these are the things that I've learned. Absolutely. But everybody wants to learn. That's why we're using these networks, is to connect, to learn, to engage with other people. So I really think that senior executives owe it to the next generation, especially if they're servant leaders, to get out there and share what they know so that they can bring up the next generation with empowering them with education and with confidence that listen, people still make mistakes. Yeah, you know, and and and imposter syndrome never seems to go away, no matter what age you're at. It it absolutely doesn't. And I think uh maybe just my own perspective there. I I started years ago now writing about change. That's the work that I do. And I made a conscious choice to say some of the quiet parts out loud, maybe be a little bit provocative, not never disrespectful, but to challenge some of the conventional wisdom. And a lot of that has led to being recognized as a top voice and all these other things. And so I don't know. I've I've found that people really appreciate a little bit more candor in expertise when you can say, hey, I tried this, it doesn't work, or I see us doing this, and I'm not sure that that's working. Certainly with AI now we get a lot of that. How how are you seeing on the AI front executives lean into this, not just from in terms of maybe populating their profile, but but talking about their experience there? Is that that seems like a green field of opportunity to really share for people about what they're struggling with, maybe? I think what I'm seeing in the field is that there's a lot of people nervous about AI, as you probably have seen as well. So compliance is a big issue. I work with a lot, a lot, a lot of compliance-based industries as well. So up until recently, it's been do not use, do not look, stay away. The same thing was for social media as well. And in 2026, I'm, you know, the big banks are finally going, okay, we can use some social media, but we're only using LinkedIn and only within these guardrails. So we think the AI discussion is happening. Um, I have been brought in to train and onboard and help people like lead into AI as well. So it's just another hat that I'm wearing because I'm equally as passionate about AI. Uh, and so um I'm seeing that some executives are interested in it, very cautious. And so there is the compliance and the security issues that are, you know, these big eyes in the room when I'm talking about AI of going, oh, okay, we're we're we can't, you know, the toothpaste is out of the tube. We can't put it back in again. So we're gonna lean into it. Um, and so I'm encouraging some of them to start to build more of like a digital twin, if you will, of taking some of the content that they may have created before, starting to create like a library of that content, so like on AI, so that your LLM, your AI, your, you know, whatever you're using, whether it's ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, that it's starting to understand how you think, the decision make the decisions you make and so forth. And especially if someone is a is a prolific writer, then you know, include that uh in your digital twin or your second brain or your intern or however you want to look at AI. Um, but I'm I'm not seeing too many of them. There's only a few of them that have actually come out and asked me for specific um guidance on AI. I think we're all sort of building the plane as we're flying it right now. Yeah. One of the big things that came out of the research that people can see behind me, the rethinking change management study that I just did, it's tied to this Gen X conversation. But, you know, there's a lot of executives who feel like they're they're ready for AI, which means they're getting the training, they're hearing from the company about the rollouts, but there is a huge experimentation gap in their active use, and that gap is really big between them and employees, and employees feel very, very far removed. And I I know this is a this is about personal branding in LinkedIn, but I share that because I think so much of what you're suggesting is there we we want to see behind the veil of your resume and your professional accomplishments to the person and help understand maybe the moment and how you're dealing with it. So on that, and I know we've talked about personal vulnerability, thought leadership, talking about the company brand, my brand. What do you say to executives who feel like this is all just too much? I have to do my day job, I have to write about AI on LinkedIn, I've got to update my banner and my profile and post once a week. How do you help people navigate what feels pretty overwhelming with everything else going on? Well, they they can call me. No, call me, I'll help you out. Um, I they it is tough. It, I mean, it is tough. And so LinkedIn really shouldn't be a set it and forget it. I do work with executives to get them onboarded, to get their whole optimize their profile. That takes a long time to do. And to make sure that that profile, and I'm not selling my services, but to dovetail the the um the algorithm and their own voice. And often what I'll say is uh the metaphor is when you're inside the jar, you cannot see the label. Right? So when you're inside the jar, you cannot see the label. My job is to sort of be that objective person as the audience to help write and optimize the profile for the executive to do that. So if they want to have me help them, that's fine. I love to help people in any way, shape, or form that I can. Um, so that that it's time or money. AI is doing a great job if you know how to prompt it properly to learn your voice, to help create content that you can create thought leadership pillars about. I'm I'm I'm really leaning into all of that as well. And I'm working with a couple of executives on helping them with that and making sure that it's not AI slob, that it's not just platitudes of boring stuff. People, we are inundated with more information than ever before. So we need those personalized perspectives. So finding the time to do that is not going to be easy when an executive has to spend money on so many other different responsibilities. Um, but it doesn't take a lot of time. If you spend maybe 20 minutes a week on LinkedIn, I think that that's a good week. And publishing content, less than 1% of the 1.3 billion members on LinkedIn are actually publishing. So it's a huge opportunity for people to publish content and generate awareness. And if they're really stuck, ask their marketing person to help them out. Uh, even resharing posts from the company page doesn't get as much reach as organic posts, about first-person posts, those those get the most reach. But even just being a brand ambassador, clicking like when one of your teammates has celebrated an accomplishment or saying well done. I mean, those little pats on the back from a public perspective, I don't even know if you can quantify that really. Yeah. Yeah. And you said something in there that it that's really important. And maybe just a quick tip from you. Every company has some kind of brand social media guidelines. And then there's our personal stories. How do you help? How do we navigate that? Because I think there's a tension between sharing the corporate brand and then sharing you. Is there any best practices in there? Does it depend? I say follow the company guard guardrails. Um I want to be, we're human, right? So how do we be vulnerable and be human? I think as long as we're not going to too, you want to be a little controversial uh in some ways because controversy gets people talking, but not so controversial that you're gonna polarize people unless that's your brand. I think there's a lot of it depends, right? So some people who are polarizing draw a huge audience of people who believe what they believe. Um, I think the more middle ground we are, the more we're sort of talking to them, to, to, you know, whatever. But the the point here being is you have to be a brand representative of your organization. So if your organization is not um controversial, then don't be controversial. Um, I think you just have to follow what the, what your what your organization says. I think that's that's that's primary. Of course, don't disclose any personal information. So if if, for example, you're talking about a client that you've worked with, you don't want to name names, you don't want to disclose data. There are certain certain things that common sense would say don't don't share those kind of information, that kind of information without permission. Um, and so so that's sort of where you can lean into those personalized stories without kind of going too offside. And yeah, again, just don't be a ding-dong. Like, I don't know if there's any other better way to say that, but like, you know, the fact that you have to say that means there's people that have been ding-dong. So uh Leslie, we've we've hit a lot here. This has been a rapid-fire masterclass of you know how to how to think differently about your LinkedIn if you're in executives. Uh, what are the the two to three things you really want people to hone in on and take away from this conversation about leveling up your LinkedIn presence as an executive? Okay, so the first is create a presence. Create a presence that you can feel proud of, that tells your story, that is humanizing, human humanizes your brand that you feel comfortable uh in that first impression. The next is to, well, that kind of goes back to my book, quite frankly, to create a strong first impression, to make quality connections. So build out a network. Uh, make sure you're building a network of people that you know and people that you want to get to know. Just not just everybody. Don't worry about the vanity metrics. That's a whole other story. Uh, but people that you know, people that you want to get to know, and publish content when you can. So I think following those three different things, and again, again, I'm gonna go back to the when you create a first impression, photo, headline, and about section, if you do nothing else on your profile, those are the key sections to focus on. Yeah, it's it's it's really such great advice. And I would just add back to our little conversation about the Gen X challenge, the research that we've put out shows that for us, Gen Xers were not done. I think two-thirds of Gen Xersers are actually delaying retirement as well, which is an interesting stat. And so the time is now. And I think when it comes to change, AI, disruption, all of the things that are coming, we occupy many of the executive positions across companies. People are looking at us as leaders and representatives of how to show up, not just in person but online. And I think your recommendations are I'd maybe add one, which is start now. If you don't have a presence, even just get those things going and get some feedback and keep trying. So uh Leslie, just really, really great. We'll, you know, we'll get all this into the show notes and everything. But as you know, we also have a closing tradition on this podcast, which is the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And they almost always work out in a really, really fun way. Uh, and so the question that has been left for you is if you could replace or take the place of one well-known social media creator today, who would it be? A social media creator that I would replace today. Um, well, could I say Mr. Beast? I mean, if you're gonna go big, why not go big, right? Um, yeah, I mean, Mr. Beast would be, he's an interesting cat. I mean, I would love to know how he got to where he's at. And I I watched his interview on uh letter, like David Letterman interviewed Mr. Beast. So I find as somebody who's watched, so he's definitely more Gen Z and watching those influencers come out of nowhere. And find, and and and really what excites me and what interests me about that influencer culture is uh is how they just created a brand out of nothing. How he with a fidget spinner or counting to 10,000 or whatever it was when my son was telling me all about this. I'm like, who's watching this guy? And now he's got multi-million dollar, um, you know, I mean, I can't even go through and some people are like, who's Mr. Beast? A gender gender extra, like, who's Mr. Beast? But I think he's a fascinating case study of how you take something out of nothing and turn it into being the largest social media influencer of all time, next to PewDiePie, of course. But yeah, I I I've seen some articles about him that he's really there's he's he's going through his own transition, I think, as much of the SEO world and search world has changed and the social media metrics are starting to shift. So it's a really, really interesting question. Uh, and I really like your answer because I think you might find at the end of that day, you're like, okay, one day was enough. I I think I wouldn't want to have to live that life every day. It's probably not as glamorous as we all think. I think that's the misconception that the that people who want to be influencers, because I do have a Gen Z, you know, child and and his cohort and some of my students would say, I want to be an influencer. And I and I want to say, do you know how much work goes into showing up video gaming when you don't want a video game of doing blogging when you don't want a video blog? Like all those things require time, effort, consistency, and energy. And you might not be making money for X number. So all of those things to be said, it looks very glamorous. It is a lot of hard work. So Yeah, that that's a story I tell about athletes, particularly my son. I was a college athlete. My son is getting ready to go to college to play football. And uh, you know, most kids want they want the Super Bowl moments, but they don't understand the thousands and thousands of hours that they don't see that goes into those very, very small moments. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. And it applies to LinkedIn too, right? It applies everywhere. It applies everywhere. Uh Leslie, where can people find you, follow your work? Obviously, LinkedIn, but other places where people can get to know you and follow your work if they want to learn more. Uh on LinkedIn, I'm Leslie HyphenHughes. So the whole big long tail of the LinkedIn dot IN Leslie-Hughes. Um, I'm not that active on Instagram, but if people want to reach out to me on Instagram, I'm at at Punch Media. Uh, my email address is Leslie at punchmedia.ca. Awesome. We will get all of those into the show notes. And thank you again, Leslie, for just a ton of really practical guidance and wisdom and so well spoken and very clear about what people should do. And I can attest that all your recommendations are things that I've worked on and experimented, and they work. And we've never worked together in that capacity, but I've done those things and I can tell people that it really does make a huge difference. So well, that's why you're a top voice. That's well, let's let's hope. Now we gotta stay there. So that's that's that's that's the big trick. So thank you to all of you who tuned in today. Thank you to all of you who are following the Top Voice Podcast, another great conversation. Excited to have you in part of in this community with us. 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