Produced By - From Zero to Millions: Scaling Businesses with AI & Smart Strategy | #93: MJ Jaindl

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Need expert help with launching, growing, or marketing your podcast? We’ve got you.⁠https://www.epixtory.digital/MJ Jaindl is an experienced sales and marketing leader with over 20 years of driving growth for SaaS and e-commerce businesses. He’s built and led high-performing GTM teams, developed persuasive sales strategies, and refined marketing systems that deliver results. His achievements include selling over $100M in SaaS subscriptions, scaling Buddy Media from $0 to an $800M acquisition by Salesforce, and doubling Miva’s GTM efficiency in just a year. Now, he’s combining his expertise with AI to explore how it’s transforming sales, marketing, and personal branding.In this episode, MJ shares the story behind his rapid LinkedIn growth, what inspired him to start, and how he’s built a strong personal brand. He also talks about balancing a demanding career as a CRO, being a father, and continuing to grow both professionally and personally. Tune in for insights on content creation, branding, and leveraging AI to scale your business.Connect with MJ:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaindl/⁠ Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠⁠⁠Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I listened to this fake interview between Joe Rogan and Sam Altman. It was completely fake. And they sounded exactly like them. And it was an interesting conversation. And I had a realization, which was the reason why that was so good is because both of them have so much content online. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of hours of speaking online. And so now AI is able to kind of almost replicate them. And that was something that stuck in my head of, that's really interesting.

I'm almost invisible online. and this isn't like a live for everything, but I have two young boys, and my youngest was one at the time. So I'm like, wow, if I have enough content online over the long term, maybe in the future my kids could ask me a question, even if I'm not around,

and it would be able to reproduce an answer that I would be able to give them, advice I'd be able to give them. And I was like, wow, that would be a great gift to give to my children over time if I can do that. So this is a weird, like a weird and crazy idea. I mean, it's odd. When I tell people that they're like,

oh, that seems kind of crazy. Like you want to replicate yourself. in the future. Before we dive into today's episode, please hit that subscribe button. Your support helps us grow and inspire more people on their journeys. Thank you. Hello, MJ. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show. I'm pumped to be here. Thank you so much. So MJ, for those who don't know you, can you please introduce yourself? Sure. So I'm MJ. I've been working in tech for over 20 years. So currently I'm a chief revenue officer to come and call MIVA, which is a B2B SaaS company. So we're servicing B2B companies that want to sell more online, B2B direct to consumer.

And then typically companies, we have a really strong niche in companies that have really massive catalogs. And so that's what we're focused on right now. And I run sales and marketing. And I've had sales and marketing roles for the past 20 years and a lot of different startups, high growth, medium growth, everything in between. I would be curious, what is it that you've been always interested in? Because as we discussed before, and as I saw on LinkedIn, you've got some exciting past when it comes to entrepreneurship and businesses. Yeah.

I think like two themes really have, when I look back, two themes have really, of really to stay constant for a long time. You know, the first one is just interest in technology. You know, I've had that ever since I was a kid, and my brother and I were like stringing different video game systems into like five different TVs to make it look like really cool or installing car stereos and our friends' cars and things like that. My brother and I were both interested in kind of new technology,

and that has stuck with me. And so when I went to college, I graduated with a business degree, but I had a minor in management information systems. And I took a bunch of computer science classes. So the first thing was always technology, you know. And then the second was just entrepreneurship, business, and growing businesses. And so through all of that, I eventually landed in the startup world and the technology world. and I've been a part of different kind of high-touch enterprise SaaS companies ever since, you know, for the last 20 years.

Yeah, so those are the two things I think have stuck with me the most over time. And would you imagine back then, you know, playing with technology and maybe dreaming about its future, that it's going to look like these days with AI and I don't know, all the developments and progress? I always knew that it would be part of what I like focused on and what I did. did, you know, technology. I think, you know, if you asked me three years ago, if we were going to be sitting here today with the AI models that you see and the work that they're able to do, an operator being able to crawl sites and actually do work for you, I would not believe it. And I'm a, I'm definitely a technical, I'm a technology optimist. So I'm always kind of like,

I believe that we can bring really interesting new technology to bear in society. And I would have said, I don't believe it. I mean, it's, it's pretty. it's pretty amazing how far we've come with chat GPT and open AI and kind of how they pioneered this whole LOM, you know, AI space. But it's really exciting. You know, I think it's important for everybody who's thinking about growing their career. I think it's important for them to know it and understand it. You know, I dive in and I encourage my team to do so, right? So it's, we talk about it all day long in our team meetings on how we're going to use AI to help us win, help us grow, help us automate things, be more efficient internally.

And I think for anybody who's growing their career, they have to. You have to because you can literally like two, three, four, five, 10x what you're doing, your output every day if you really know how to use the tools. Yeah. And it's fun. Why not? You know? Yeah, exactly.

You never know what you might discover and even enjoy it. Exactly. Agreed. agree but at the same time it's challenging or it must be challenging to keep up with everything not only to know about it but also actually try it by yourself so how do you manage to keep up with everything can even try that so you know schedule what so i i have a family i got two young boys a five-year-old and a two-year-old i have a team i have a demanding day job i have quotas and growth goals for our company and you know, I have personal goals.

You also, sorry to Interim, but you haven't mentioned that you've been smashing it on LinkedIn for people who don't know, on top of everything. Yeah. And so, no, thank you for that. Like, I'm happy with the growth last year at this time. I think in January, 2024, I got 150 new followers or something like that. In February, I got 57. So it's been a wild ride and things that started to take off in the last few months.

So I appreciate you saying that. that. But to answer your question, how, I really like time box things. You know, I like, I wake up in the morning. I'm with my sons. You know, I pack my oldest son's lunch. We have breakfast together. Like, we chill. As soon as my wife takes them out the door to school, I hop on and I post my post for the day. You know, I comment for a little bit, post my post for the day, comment afterwards. And then I have a time block in there, which is like, you know, 30 minutes to an hour or something. sometimes before 9 o'clock where I, I'm either creating content and I'm doing that daily. I've tried to create as many posts as I can.

And then I, and then I'm researching new stuff. I'm playing around with a new technology. I'm playing around with the LLMs and all the models. And so that's kind of my research time. And then sometimes I'll do it at night. Like if I'm not, you know, sometimes I just like watch Netflix with my wife before bed or whatever, chill. But like other times I'll do like a little.

research when I'm like hanging out on the couch. But then other than that, I mean, that's it. But if you have that time block, you know, I feel if you have that time block once a day, you commit to it, you actually do it. You can make a lot of progress that way. You don't have to spend all day researching. It's like just have your one time, but make sure you do it every day. And then you'll get your five hours in every week of like research time as long as you like stay committed to it. So I try to do that. I try to be rigorous about that. And like not every day is perfect. You know what I'm saying? Like some days, things are crazy. There's a work emergency.

There's a family emergency. Like, whatever it is. But I try my best. That's how I keep up with it and they'll go absolutely insane, you know? But I like what you said because sometimes it might seem like too much or the you are behind. But as you said, if you do even a little bit every day, imagine how much it adds up over a year. Yeah, exactly. The LinkedIn progress is a result of that.

You know, I just said I want to post every day. I didn't have any other goal. And then I got into that routine. And then over time, things started to build and gain traction. So I'm like, I'm a living example of that, right? Just if you can stay consistent, you can do almost anything. Like habits are so important. It's overplayed on LinkedIn.

Like everyone's talking about habits and consistency is like all these messages that are just so played out on LinkedIn and so bad. But it is really true. Like the reason why people say it's so much is there's truth to it, you know? Yeah. So I don't even I don't even hate on the reminders. I don't care. People post about it. I'm like, all right, cool.

We all need the reminder. Get it, habit systems, the whole thing. But it is true. It is true. So that's how I keep up with it. I heard it a few times as well. Like, what's your secret? How did you?

I don't know. How did you do that? That's like you just show up every day. You keep improving. There's really no secret behind it. There's no secret. That's the wild. Yeah.

that's really the crazy thing, you know? And then on LinkedIn growth, it's like you just watch what creators that are gaining traction are doing, you know? And if you watch what they're doing and you can kind of, you know, see how they're talking, see how they're writing, see the structure of their posts. Like, then you get a feel for, all right, these are the things that are resonating. These are the things that are working. You can start to, you can start to emulate that and put your own spin on it, put your own

experience on it. I mean, that's really what I did in the beginning, you know, like, I saw Charlie Hill's post. I saw the way that he did carousels. I had never done a carousel before. He did one about like analytics as the first one I remember. He did one about how to download a file from your LinkedIn analytics and put it in a chat TVT and like, you know, whatever.

I was like, oh, that's really helpful. I did it in the next five minutes. I literally downloaded. I did that what he described. I was like, wow, I got a lot of value out of that because I could do it right away. And then I look back at his old post. It's like every post had that kind of flavor to it. where I could do it in the next five minutes.

I could do this right now. And his growth was going off the chart. So I'm like, I'm like, Charlie's on to something, you know. And so I started doing that. Like he was a huge inspiration to me. And that really helped my content when I was like, man, what can I write that someone can do in the next five minutes, next 10 minutes? And they've actually learned something.

They've learned a small, tiny skill that they could stack on others. I agree. That's not I approach it. So to Charlie. Charlie's demand. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, because it takes time to learn something or to learn from mistakes or figure something out.

So if there are people who actually share it and it's like a shortcut for you. So why not learn from them? Why not, you know, take advantage of that? Yeah. I completely agree. Completely agree. And actually, in the first place, what made you to start posting on LinkedIn actively or start building your brand?

I have like the weirdest reasons why. why I started posting it like that. The weirdest reasons, like the first an obvious one, which everybody talks about is the, you know, an audience is an asset. So that's the obvious one.

The second is like I was relatively invisible online. Like if you look like 2023, we talked about this for a second, you know, before this, before the interview. Like I was relatively invisible. So when I looked at that, I saw the whole kind of like LLM thing happening.

I listened to this fake interview between Joe Rogan and Sam Altman. It was completely fake. And they sounded exactly like them. And it was an interesting conversation. And I had a realization, which was the reason why that was so good is because both of them have so much content online. Like hundreds and hundreds and thousands of hours of speaking online. And so now the, you know, now AI is able to kind of almost replicate them. and that was something that's stuck in my head of that's really interesting.

I'm almost invisible online. And this isn't like a live for everything, but I have two young boys. And my youngest was one at the time. So I'm like, wow, if I have enough content online over the long term, maybe in the future my kids could ask me a question, even if I'm not around. And it would be able to reproduce an answer that I would be able to give them advice. I'd be able to give them. And I was like, wow, that would be a great gift,

to give to my children over time if I can do that. So this is a weird, like a weird and crazy idea. But I was like- I wasn't expected in such a reason. It's really smart. It's really like, I mean, it's odd. When I tell people that they're like, oh, that seems kind of crazy.

Like you want to like replicate yourself in the future. And I was like, well, you know, yeah, anyway, I just wanted that for them. So my thought process was, I need to learn how to write online. I need to learn how to communicate online. I need to like get more content out there, but it's intimidating when you go from zero to a lot. So my thought process there was start on LinkedIn.

I've had a 20 year career, share what I've, share what I know. And then, you know, kind of progress from there, which is the plan. And that's still kind of the track that I'm on. I really spent a whole year trying to like first six months, trying to figure out what content I wanted to put on there on LinkedIn. And then I just started sharing like what I learned yesterday, literally. Like I learned this like a week ago and I would put that on there. And that content works great.

So now it's I'm really just here's what I'm interested in. Here's what I'm doing. Here's what I did yesterday. Here's what worked. Here's what the results were. And I was been spending a lot of time doing that. Like I really spent the second half of 2024 and really January doing that. But I plan on evolving my content.

this year and putting more content out around business growth and, like, e-commerce and that sort of content. But I wanted to nail one pillar, like really nail it and then start building on top of that instead of like moving all around because when I first started, I was jumping around. I was like, I would share a personal story one day and then I would share this. I would share a photo or I shared this. And it just wasn't working. Like I was really posting to crickets for four or five months and I saw firsthand that that is not the right strategy. And so I've kind of shifted to like nail the one pillar and then build off of it. I feel like I can relate because when I was starting out, I felt like I have to post something, but I didn't know like what to focus on. So I was just

probably posting for the sake of posting. So then there was really any structure or sense. and that probably comes back about what is frequently discussed on LinkedIn that you should have a strategy for some kind of, I don't know, purpose. Yeah. And, you know, don't just put there as something just for the sake of posting. 100%. And it's hard to figure it out. It's hard to figure out what to post because if you're posting every day, which you kind of need to,

you know, there's different levels of consistency, but you have to post a few times a week. I don't think one is enough. I think three is probably the minimum. them. And so if you're putting out that much content, you kind of have to care about it. You know, if you don't care about it, you don't have the motivation to create it. It's going to be really hard. So it has to be this kind of weird, eiki guy, you know, then diagram of things that you know, things that you love. And I think that's hard for people to figure out at first. At least it was for me, you know, it was challenging to figure that out

because there's a lot of advice out there of just like post what you know about. Well, I know a lot about like sales and persuasion and you know some things that I don't necessarily get pumped up to write a content piece about you know yeah I think it's it's really important also something that you are passionate about or at least interested in because if you want to stick long term not going to lie sometimes it may feel like a chore to show up and be there every day if it's actually something that you enjoy or that you know you are curious about it makes certain much easier and more enjoyable. Yeah, exactly. And then you're going to have the motivation to actually do it. So I kind of had to go through that journey too of, you know,

what do I know, what do I want to post about, what works on LinkedIn, you know, because I think everything works to an extent. But if you want to grow very fast, like there are certain topics that are really important. You know, AI is obviously trending, you know, writing and content creation is and growth are what people care about on LinkedIn. So I think when you're on that platform, you kind of have to, you should at least understand what works and what does it, you know? So, yeah, all of those things you have to factor it. I don't think it's so easy for someone that's just starting out.

And I would say a good strategy is just like try different things. Like just commit to getting the posts out and then try different topics that you are interested in maybe even just slightly, you know, and then try them out to see if that sparks something in you. And if it does, just kind of lean into that and keep going. I mean, that's the best advice that I give to someone because a lot of the conventional advice is just like, take something that you know and just post about it. Well, maybe, but then you might also not love that. You know, you may be good at it, but you may not love it. And that's why it's like you got to go back to that kind of like ikigai circle of like passion plus what you know, I think.

I agree because I think it's probably the best way how to find out just to try it, see if it works. If it doesn't work, well, at least you find out that it doesn't work. Then you don't waste any more time, but at least you need to try to find out. Exactly. I can only agree. Yeah. And do you have like a plan for the future if you want to niche down or, I don't know, more AI,

or as you said, incorporate more of the business or continue with your current strategy? So last year was a good. For me, last year was a year of learning. So how does this platform work? How do you grow on it? What are the different skills that you need to grow an account? And this year is applying that. Not so much to myself, but for the rest of my team.

So, you know, what we're going to do is we're going to grow our CEO's account. We're going to grow a bunch of folks' accounts that are on the sales team who have already started posting. And now that I've done it, I've kind of gone through the, the process of learning, what works, what kind of process do you need, when to post, how to post, how to structure your post, what really draws folks in, how to gain reach. I want to apply that to like our whole team. So that's a big goal for this year for our team and MIVA as a company is we're going to start growing accounts. And I'm a big proponent and fan of social selling. So we're going to grow a bunch of accounts on the team and then we're going to start funneling those back

into lead generation. So that's that's one piece. You know, we'll be talking about that through our marketing channel and, and the other accounts that we're growing. I think the other is just, we're going to lean even heavier into automated lead gen. So a lot of folks talk about this. I will talk about this forum post going forward, you know, automating the whole lead gen process. So today, yeah, today we're using, you know, we're using clay to enrich emails. Basically, our flow is like, we use Zoom info, lists going to Clay, Clay's for data enrichment, and we're currently using outreach for sending mails, but I think eventually we'll probably switch over to instantly and just kind of getting better at that process. So the automation of cold outreach and really starting to nail that.

And then we're using our B2B on our website. So we're using our B2B to see all the LinkedIn profiles that are actually hitting our website. And so there's a lot for us to do there. And I, you know, we'll be posting about that. And then the third piece I would say is from a marketing perspective, we're diving into being able to use tools like make.com to create more programmatic content. So one of our big strategies this year is something that we're talking about internally is digital density. And digital density is creating very hyper-specific content that solves problems. And again, this is an adaptation of stuff that works on LinkedIn, which is like super specific, super actionable, using our product and then creating ultra-dense articles that are

literally step-by-step walkthroughs and how-toes of how to use our product to accomplish certain goals and alleviate pain points. And then using tools like make.com integrated with deep seek or open eye AI chat GPT to create articles that are like super deep, super dense and do it in an automated way. So we're experimenting with that now. So my, my head, content creator is learning make as we speak. So she's learning automations. So we'll, you know, I'll post a little bit about that. Those are the, that's kind of the expansion. I probably won't post much about the automated lead gen. I think a lot of folks have that covered on LinkedIn. But I look forward to posting around, posting about the, you know,

marketing and content creation and what we're doing on the marketing side of the house. So I think that's how I plan on evolving it this year, you know, I don't really know more than that. More than that, it sounds pretty amazing and like a great plan. Want to take your podcast to the next level? At Epic Story, we help you launch, improve and market your podcast with expert guidance. Whether you're just starting out

or refining an existing show, we've got you covered. Visit EpicStory.org and bring your Epic Story to life. And I think that you kind of sold it that people would want to join your team with the strategy and even seeing like your growth. because I can imagine if you spend time learning and now going to apply to the rest of your team, it will just help them to skyrocket their growth because obviously I think it's safe to say that

you grew a lot. I'm pretty sure that once we release this episode, you will have, you'll grow even more. So maybe can you share? Of course, there is so much stuff. We already discussed something, but some maybe key findings, what to do on LinkedIn, how to grow. I don't know, how to, I don't want to say any shortcuts, but what helped you? Maybe what people overlook and, you know, in secrets. I think like the main two that stick out and this conversation is a tricky one because you could just repeat a lot of things that are said over and over and over again. And like if you spend time thinking about and following people that talk about LinkedIn growth,

you're going to get the basic things. but I think where my content actually started working is when I engaged. You know, that was the biggest thing for me is that I was following people who I really respected their content, what they were putting out there. I thought it was high quality. But I would kind of lurk on them. Like I was like from afar looking at their content and being like, wow, that looks great. And then I made like a frame shift and was just like, look, I want to spread as much positivity

to people. Like if I'm admiring your content, I'm going to tell you. If I love your content, I'm going to tell you. You know, and so that helped when I started doing that. And I just made a practice of that. Going back to the systems and schedule is that was now planned into my day for 15 to 30 minutes. I started with five minutes, but 15 to 30 minutes, I made the list. I made the bookmark list.

I went through my bookmarks. And I just commented on the people who I respected. So that was one thing that, that, that was one thing that. then reciprocity followed. But I don't think people should expect reciprocity. I think the second part of that equation is that you have to work on your content. So like, you know, if you have a great content creator, like one of the top accounts and you're, you're commenting on them daily and you're like, why aren't they commenting on my content? Well, one of the reasons why is like your content's not great, you know? They just don't like it. Yeah, they might just not like it and it becomes monotonous

and boring to have to comment on someone's regurgitated article over and over and over again. And so I think a big thing there is like, yes, go do the engagement and start to form relationships, but you also have to provide value back to the community. If you're not doing that, like in some way, then you're really holding yourself back. So you have to think about why is my content not hitting? Like, why is someone like, you know, Ruben Hassid's. comment like content crushing. It's because it's very high quality.

Like he spends a lot of time on the videos. You know, he goes deep. He has a perspective. He's very knowledgeable. And then you have to think to yourself, how do I become very knowledgeable? How do I produce a video like that? How do I produce a carousel like that? And you have to start putting out things that stand up to like the top creators content.

Otherwise, you're not giving people a reason to come back and engage. You're not giving people a reason to come reciprocate. all of that, you know, all of the engagement that you've given on their accounts. So I think those two things come hand in hand. I think a lot of folks miss one or the other, right? They're focusing so much on creating great content, but they're not really engaging. Or they're engaging, engaging, engaging, engaging, because people say comment, but they're not, they're not improving their content.

No one's content is going to be awesome at first. It's all going to suck at first. But like, you need to kind of start stepping up the ladder like all the time, you know, and start thinking about what's, what's a new twist. on what everybody's saying, you know, you're gonna repeat things. That's gonna happen on LinkedIn. That's okay.

It's fine to get inspired by someone's content and repeat a message. Think about how you can spin it, how you can make it a little bit better, how you can improve it. I think those two things are really important. And then all the other advice is out there, like your post formatting, your hooks,

your e-hooks, your endings, you know, your body, your CTA, your PS, your signpost, your, you know, the format, the visual hooks, like all that stuff's out there. All that stuff is important. So those are all important. But I think those two are really what you need to focus on, incrementally getting better at the content

and then engaging with people whose content that you admire. Once that happens, you will get this reciprocity loop of them respecting you and commenting more on your stuff and getting value from yours as well. And that's where the magic really starts to happen. You know, so yeah, or at least it did for me. Yeah. No, I agree and I like it. Maybe only one point that I would add

is like when it comes to engagement Sometimes I think it's also Try to Add value when it comes to Commenting because I don't want to discuss like AI commenting but It feels like that maybe sometimes people don't know What to say or maybe they comment

But then you don't comment back But maybe because The comment doesn't really tell you anything You know it doesn't necessarily Need to be something super thought's true, but even like to share your opinion, have fun, ask a question or something, no need to overthink it. But at least, you know, don't say just great post or kind of summarize what you just said.

And then there isn't really anything to answer to such a go. Here's the simplest hack for that. It really is because, like, you know, we're not always going to have a profound point of view on every post that we read, especially if you're doing like 50 comments a day. It's just you don't have the mental bandwidth to like go through 50 posts and have something super insightful for it. At least I don't. So I think it's like for me, the easiest way to overcome this without just saying like I agree, great posts, you know, and adding no value is just say one thing that you liked about it. It doesn't have to be profound.

You could say something as some people might feel hesitant to do this because they feel like because it's LinkedIn and because it's business focused that they need to be. like more businessy or perfect. Yeah, but like you don't necessarily have to. You could just say like, hey, I really like the color combination on their slide. That is something that's an observation. It's not profound. It's just it's a compliment, you know, and people like compliments other than great posts. Because great posts, we all knows bullshit or it's like, it's not bullshit, but it's maybe AI or just lazy.

But you could say like, look, I, you know, I really like the font thing. you used on this or a slide two was really concise and you know I know how how much work it takes to make your message clear whatever just like pick one little thing about it you know I've really liked how you you know I really liked how the the rehook you know pulled the reader in on this one I was I was captivated by a rehook that was really cool like something specific that you like and you don't even need to go into why you can just say like hey I I liked it. And to me, that's worthwhile because it's not cookie cutter and it is also, it's spreading positivity.

Because everybody like, look, creating content is this thing where it's, you're always kind of like, is my content good? You know, you're looking at the likes. You're like, you're getting, you know, you don't get enough. You're getting these weird dopamine spikes, especially if your content starts doing well. And then you're writing something that you think is going to do well and doesn't do well. And even the top creators that I've talked to, like they go through this. Like, they get sad, like they get sad when their post doesn't do well, you know, like it or not.

They just do. So putting a little positivity in there is always worthwhile as long as you can avoid the cookie cutter. And then once in a while, you'll have a really good POV and then share that. But that would be my advice to kind of overcome that challenge because I agree with you. If you're kind of hurting your brand, if you're 100%, I agree, you know, if you're just like going down the list, you're hurting your own reputation that way. But with that simple hack, I think you could fix that pretty easy. I just remembered example recently from some of my posts because I posted a video and I edited these lights to the background and someone actually commented. Oh, wow, you've got nice new lights in the background.

I was like, someone noticed it's so nice to hear. Because I know it's just a boring white room. So I just thought that I would try to improve it. And you go through the comments. There's like, for example, I know, great club, great club, this, which, yeah, it's awesome. But then when one person says, nice background, I'm like, yes, that's nice. Someone knows it. I love it.

I love it. He's got your brand, the brand green on there. It looks, it looks good. It looks good, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. And just speaking of beautiful green, I like your branding. So can you tell us when it comes to your content creation, we discussed it before the recording.

I like your. colors, your designs. You said that you do it by yourself. So I don't know, tell us more about how you create it when you find time for it, how you create it so well. Yeah. This is my favorite, one of my favorite topics because I, I'm always trying to think about, like, how do I, how do I speed this up?

It's taking too long. But when I started posting, I post text post for like three months straight, like literally text only post. It was a bad strategy, terrible strategy. But maybe like in. April, May of last year, I started posting in January, but April May of last year, I started doing carousels. I made a convo carousel by myself. I wanted something that was like bright and beautiful and colorful. And so the first iteration of everything that I did was like a lot of different colors.

And I worked with a great designer here in New York who helped me with the color scheme. But I had a really hard time choosing like one color. So I had all the, I had all the, I had, purples and I had oranges and I had all this stuff and I did my best to work with them. But the one thing that I found over time was like the inconsistency, no one really, like, certain creators I'd see just kind of owned a color. There was a strong association with them. Automatic. When you think of the person, the color comes to your mind. Yeah. And I think, you know, this guy, um, Jonathan Cohen, basically.

He posted this one post. There was a carousel, and it was all different colors. And the post was basically, like, who is this? And it was just like the colors. I think it was a silhouette in the colors. And that was cool because I went through. I'm like, oh, I know all those people. You know what I mean?

Like I knew that color right off the top of my head. So then I was like, you know, I'm kind of all over the place. I'm a little bit inconsistent. And I wanted to simplify. And then I also, what I found was because I had so many colors, there was complimentary and someone clash, and it just took me longer to create, actually. So it took me longer to create the infographic or the carousel. It would add hours to it to try to get that right.

And that's when I finally decided, look, I need to pick something and stick to it. And it will also, in the end, make it easier to create all these designs. So that's when I went through that process that I explained to, I did 100 iterations of like all these. I didn't do 100, but I did like 30 iterations, literally 30 of different color combinations. And most of them were like one, two colors, you know. And I didn't come in in the beginning. I first started with like five.

I think I sent that to Daniel too. We talked about Daniel Cornblum. Like I sent that to him. I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about this. He's like in too many colors. Like it was good advice because, you know, you have to simplify it. So I did that. And then I finally whittled it down.

and landed on where I'm at today. But I do find that it's sped up the process a lot. You know, I feel more comfortable with it. And I think it's helpful for creators to kind of like pick something that, you know, that you like. Practice creating with it in combo. Like create stuff with it in common. See if you like the output first. Because that's the big thing.

Like you might like a color. But maybe that's like it's hard to create something with that color, you know? It might be it might be too. bright or too dull or not stand out and you got to think about it on a mobile screen, you know, like what does that actually going to look like on a mobile screen? Is it going to stand out? Is I'm going to notice it, you know? And if it's easy to work with, for example, when you create, I don't know, carousels or

any designs and you need to put their text, isn't it, is the shade, you know, going to work with black or white? It's a thing like high contrast. When I settled on this like green mint color, I wanted to post light and dark. So I want to be able to do an all-dark carousel with high-contest light letters. And I want to be able to do a light carousel with all dark letters. And so what I found was that like a yellow, for example, which I think is a great color, but it kind of forces you into all-dark a little bit more than I wanted to because if you have a yellow with black,

it's almost overwhelming to your eye, right? So like you're looking at it like, whoa, that's like intense. There are some creators that pull it off, like the neon yellowite. I'm remembering some that, like, do a good job of pulling it off, but it's difficult. So, yeah, I was thinking about that too. I wanted to be able to post light and dark. I didn't want to post dark all the time. It makes all sense to me.

And I think it's helpful for the people who might be still developing their branding or their colors, because that's definitely something that makes your life easier later on. Yeah, for sure, for sure. As simple as you can make it, you know, one or two colors, one or two fonts. It's like I use like two or three, I use three blacks, like kind of different shades of black, but then I just use that one green. And it just simplifies the content creation process, you know, dramatically. Like that the thing that I posted today, the different whales and the deep seek versus ideogram, like that took me like five minutes.

That graphic took me five minutes, you know. And it's beautiful speaking objectively. It looks good. Yeah. Yeah, it looks decent. Yeah, it looks decent. Like, I was happy with the way that it came out. I was like, okay, this looks cool.

This is going to be eye-catching. And it didn't take long. But if you're trying to like mess around with like seven different colors that you like, it becomes, you know, now you took that five-minute task and that's a 30-minute task. If you do that, if you do that every day, that kind of compounds in a bad way. So, yeah, keeping the design simple. You can make it simple and then make it also look cool. You know, that's another, like, inspiration.

from that's a that's the inspiration from daniel right it's like his stuff looks cool but it's also simple you know i think he nails that color combination that's like he's been an inspiration for me for that reason it's like it could look really sick it doesn't look basic but it but it's but it's simple and it's nature i love that about it shout out to dan he always nails it of course yeah he's the man and we discussed it a bit before the recording but for any o gs who remember your older color, what actually made you to switch? Because before you used orange, so why did you actually decided for the change? You had an orange background, but I was using an orange, a purple, a turquoise, a pink, like a yellow, like all of that stuff was part of the palette that I had

in Conva. And it was just too overwhelming. I fell out of love with like the way that it looked. And then I also was like, this is just taken too long, you know? This is like, that was a thing. I eventually just got kind of bored with it. I think the second is, you know, probably not a good reason. You probably stick with things longer, like not to jump around. But the second more important one was it was too hard to create. It just took too long to create. And then the third was, you know, when I saw that carousel and it was all of the different people,

like, would somebody even recognize like what my color is? Because every carousel I put out is like 10 different colors. And I was like, I don't really know if I have a brand recognition. I don't. It wasn't that I didn't know. I knew. I didn't. And I was like, maybe that's okay.

I don't really know. Like, there's, there's accounts that like, you know, like Justin Welch is just like black, you know, like he doesn't need a color or Dancoe. Like, he doesn't need a color. Like, and I think, I'm like, all right, you know, it's not a hundred percent necessary. I just kind of wanted it. So I was like, I want that brand of recognition. I want to start building it. And I think I would steal the deal for me.

is, you know, Daniel posted this post about personal brand. It was all of his covers from like the past year. Not all, but it was like a subset of all of his covers. And they were like, seeing them all together was one of those aha moments where it was like, wow, that is his signature. And I was like, yeah, that's cool. I want that. So it was just that, you know. It was like I wanted to be more consistent and I wanted the content to be easier to create.

And, you know, and that was that. I like it. And I think also. the good point is that don't be afraid to switch because obviously when you decided for this change, you already had a big following and you still did it. So it's like if you're not satisfied with it or it doesn't work, it's never late to change. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, I've seen folks that do it too much. You know, it's like you've seen folks who's like, it's a different color every other week and I wouldn't recommend that, you know, but once you find something that you really

like, yeah, like, you know, stick to it for a while. But if you need to change it, change it, you know, I actually think my content does better now with the simplicity of it. So I've kind of seen that. And I don't know if that's just because my account happens to be growing, but I see it doing better on average. And I think after all, maybe one of the most important things is that as long as you are happy with it, like it more than better, and enjoy. more, I would say that it's the most important thing. That's another thing, man. You've got to look at it.

You got to look at it every day. I'm designing these things every day. You have to look at it yourself. Like, that's the other thing. Like if you, yeah, if you don't like it, like if you're not, you've got to look at it every day. You know, so that's the other thing too that I learned through creating content last year. It's like, man, I got to like this color because I'm literally going to be hanging out with it every day in Convo.

So I think that's the other thing, too, you know? And that may change over time. You may just fall out of love with a color and not like it for whatever reason. Like, that's okay. Like, you can make a switch. It's not going to kill you. Yeah, exactly. And I think it will be shame, actually, not to ask you if you can tell us more about

what AI tools you actually use. Yeah. So I talk about this a lot. I use all of them. My workflow really is, you know, I'm using a notion from my content calendar. So I'm trying my best to space out, like, carousel and infographic post, which is base is like kind of what I'm doing most. I'm going to be doing more videos like this and like more shorts this year.

So I will add that into the mix. I don't do text only that much once in a while, like a blue moon. Every few months, I'll do a text only post just because. But otherwise, I'll plan that out. I'll use notion. I'll think about the ideas that I want to post about. And then when it comes to the carousels, I'm just in combo. I have my template there.

I have my colors. I have a brand kit. I use the pro version so I can have a brand kit and these other things. It speeds up the workflow dramatically. So I build those in there. I download the PDF. I put the PDF typically into Claude, you know, but like I'll play around with different models. I'm not on a pro version of Claude, but I am on the pro version of ChatTbtbt.

So sometimes Claude won't accept my PDF because it's too big. But I'll put it into an LML and I'll say describe what I talked about. it'll give me the description. So I get all the, I get the brief description back. It's usually too long. The prompt that I use most is like make it more concise. And it usually does that and trims it. And then once it's trimmed, I put it into EasyGen.

So I take that result. I copy it. I put it into EasyGen. People have asked me why I use that. Like the one thing that I learned, like as I was going through my learning process around what worked last year, and I started learning about the structure in short sentences and concise and the hook and how the body and the ending, the power ending, the CTA, signposting your post.

I was like one of the first people on EasyGen, you know, so I was on it when it was not even in the App Store. Like before it was like App. EasyGen. Like I was on it when it was a browser extension that you would install yourself and like to like a video of instructions that like it wasn't even in an app store. You had to like download and sell it. So I've been using it since then.

But what I found was the structure. how ever he's built it comes out the closest possible out of any LLM to what a what a good LinkedIn structure that actually works would come out as that's why I use it so I will do like 10 drafts and then I'll see those 10 drafts and I'll be like okay you summarize the carousel that I just built the best and adds the right points and then I'll take that and I'll put it back into notion typically and edit it there although you could go right into LinkedIn and edit it but I'll take one of those drafts or I'll combine a couple of them. I'll put it in LinkedIn and I'll edit it. And when I'm editing it, I'm usually just adding like personal insights. Like I've built the carousel. Like that

was the work. Like in the in the comments people will be like, you know, you're not using your brain. It's just AI. Like all your content's the same. You just copy and paste. All you're kind of the same. Like is my content the same? Like I built that carousel. Like you don't want to comment on that. Like I built that myself. that's the work. And so then I'll add like personal insights to that, like in signposting and some results and like here's some results that I achieve from this process. So I'll add all of that personal stuff in there. And then I'll tweak the words.

Like it doesn't always come out perfect. It never will with AI. It's going to be like perfect in your voice. So then I just go there and I make it my voice. But what that does is it saves me all the drafting. You know, like all of that drafting is where the blank cursor drafting is where all of the like, you know, there's so much, like, wasted effort in there. It's hard. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not advocating for just like never writing again. I love writing as a process of learning

in clarifying your ideas and thoughts. It's very valuable. So it'll never be like, don't write again, right? But if you're posting every single day and you want a system that helps you, cutting out that part is hugely helpful. So you use Jen for the drafts. I have it drafted up. And then, you know, after that's pretty much good to go, you know? Yeah. And then, you know, people know that I do it because there's like tons of spelling mistakes and like my post. So, like, people will understand that. Like, I've done it because, like, I made the mistake.

That's my biggest problem is like the proofreading after I've done all the edits on top of it because the carousel needs proofreading. The post needs proofreading. And. But I think sometimes it's, it might be a good thing that people see that we are still just people and it's not literally just AI and can see that. There is actually a real present behind it, and we are not perfect. I also sometimes do mistakes, but it happens to everyone.

You learn from it, and it's not a big deal. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't sweat it, although when I have a post that does really well, and there's like a spelling mistake in the title and the carousel or something crazy that I should have missed. Like, I get bummed out about that stuff. I try to shake it off. I'm like, all right, we've got another post tomorrow. We'll make up for it, but it does bum me out.

Yeah, it's not like when you can edit the copy, you know, you can edit the text. You can edit the copy. Yeah, you can't re-upload the carousel. Like, yeah, if LinkedIn's listening, allow us to re-upload the carousel in the image. I would love that. I would love that as an improvement. That would be nice. Yeah.

And we already discussed a few people, but can you name some people who were or are still your inspirations or whom you follow? like their content? I mean, yeah. I mean, there's so many. When I first started, I mean, I think this is an important part of everybody's, you know, LinkedIn, like figuring out like how you're going to grow on LinkedIn is finding folks that are talking about the stuff that you're interested in that you like, you know.

And so for me, like I said, I was doing text only posts for the first like three months, man. And I was writing them all myself, no AI. So I was just writing them all myself. So I went through that process. But I was just trying to figure out how to write better. I was like, how do I story tell? How do I just improve my writing? You know, how do I get someone to pay attention to it?

And so in that, in that era, like when I was learning that, it was like Nicholas Cole, who I think is an awesome writer. It was Dickie Bush who I think is an awesome writer. You know, it was Charles Miller, who is a great writer. Justin Welsh, obviously, like, I think he's like super concise. value dense and like the way that he writes post. So I was, you know, Yasminowik. So all of those folks, I was like copyrighting, right?

It's like, wow, okay, these guys are are crushing it. And then I started thinking about how to use AI to create content, speed up the process. Found Ruben, you know, Ruben's account was obviously huge. And he had, I don't even know if he has anymore, but he had this like library of prompts and like videos and like prompt engineering. they could buy for like 100 bucks or something like that. And I did that and I saw like all of his content. And then I started really paying attention to what Ruben was doing.

So he was an inspiration. And it was like, wow, he's really producing a top-notch content with his videos and everything I was putting out there. And I thought that was really cool. And I was inspired by that. And then after that, you know, Charlie Hills, like I mentioned to you, I think I mentioned to you before this. but I saw his post where he posted the how to download a, how to download a CSV from LinkedIn analytics and then put it into chatDBT and then get an output that's better than LinkedIn analytics.

They did it in a carousel. The carousel had like 400 likes and I'm like, how does anybody get like 400? I was getting like two likes. I was like, how does anyone get 500 likes of a post? Every single post he foot out there is like getting like these crazy numbers. Holy shit.

So Charlie was an inspiration beginning. you know, just how he created content. And then Daniel Audrey Chia was talking about like posting, copy and posting. So her content was inspiring. Noam, Nassand. I'm going to mispronounce people's names. Like, noance content around social selling and BDR, like being in the sales world. And then Jeremy, I can't pronounce Jeremy's last name, but Jeremy, French, you know he is.

Yeah. So his content around social selling. Like, I started seeing his content and I thought his was great, you know, and funny. And, like, the memes that he was doing was, like, a different kind of style. And you start learning, like, people can have different styles and still make it work, you know, for them. Celeste, Yamili, I'm mispronouncing names, but I think her content's really good, you know. And she's, she's building a business. So she's not, like, all about, hey, here's how you go viral.

She's like, here's how you actually build a real business and use AI to do it. I think her content's super solid. Sammy Cheroff, I think his content's great. Sanjit Sangari, its content's great. So, I mean, there's so many, man. There's so many great creators out there. Like, I feel like it could go on forever. Like, there's a lot of people that, and there's a lot of people that inspire me.

And imagine how many people you inspire with your content and the work. I hope so, you know, eventually. Like, I want to, I do get like a DM every once in a while of someone who said, like, oh, I didn't know this was possible. And he showed me that this was. possible. Those are like those are definitely my favorite comments and and DMs, which is or, you know, I always talk about my, the beginning of 2024, like literally February, I posted every single day and I got 57 new followers, like every single day. So I was doing nothing different

than I'm doing now. It was a different process, right? And the content quality was low and like, I didn't know what I was doing. But when people see that I was actually able to eventually start growing an audience. And then they're like, hey, you know, I was going to stop this whole thing, but because I saw this post about how you, you know, your content wasn't doing well. And now I see that this post has done well that you, that you recently posted. They're like, that's my inspiration to keep posting or keep going. And that's cool. Yeah, that's cool. When I see that, I like that a lot, you know, that definitely makes it worth it. Yeah. MJ, to be honest, I feel like the time flew so quickly.

And I want to ask you, of course, we discussed it a lot, but can you summarize or tell us where people can find you, follow you, and get in touch with you? Yeah, I mean, the best things that, you know, here on LinkedIn, you know, follow me here. I basically, I kind of followed the one platform advice. So I really wasn't expanding out, you know. I'm on X, but don't post a lot. I just started like I posted an ex post yesterday, but I, I, usually don't. So it's basically just here. You know, here, follow me on LinkedIn. And then when I start expanding out to other platforms, I'll post about that, you know. So yeah, yeah.

Here's the place to find. Yeah, I like to keep it simple. And question outside of LinkedIn or what we discussed, what is it that you enjoy doing in your free time? You know, I have a busy life now that I have two young kids. So I love, I love hanging out with my kids, playing with my kids, being with my family. I try to soak up as much as that as I possibly can, you know, when I'm not working. In the summertime, I get to get out of the city and I surf in the summer. So I'll get up pretty cool. Yeah, I'll get up super early in the morning and go surf in the summertime. And those are the big things, you know, like, again, it's simple. I try to keep it simple. I try to keep it simple. I try to to have too many things. Just a couple of small things that I love.

And I think we realized that you already juggle a lot. So I would be surprised if you had so much time to do even some other stuff. I'm trying to simplify. Do less and, you know, higher quality of the things that you do. So yeah. I think that's the way. Also, are there any books maybe if you read any books that were impactful or that you would recommend to people? Yeah, I think So, you know, I don't really talk about this at LinkedIn, but I am a big fan of kind of Stoic philosophy, which is there's a trend around it. You know, there's a trend around something from Ryan Holiday.

Yeah, exactly. That's the book that I was thinking about it. It's not discipline is destiny. It's the other one. Oh, the obstacle is the way. This is one of my, this is one of my favorite books. The Obstacle is the Way. And there's a lot of really great stoic concepts in there, just frameworks.

And I think it's helpful in living your life of like how to think about certain things, you know. Because like in a modern world, you can get wrapped around. You could get your mind wrapped around the axle of so many things that don't matter. And I think that book is just such an excellent framework around how to focus on things that matter. Understanding that everything's hard. You know, everything is a challenge, how to have the right mindset around that challenge. You know, so you have to like keep going, keep trying. lying. Like the one thing I took away from that was, I think, I'm more fati, which is, it's not like accept your fate. It's like embrace your fate and kind of what it means more practically is love the obstacle. You know, that was like a framework that really hit me hard. So it's, you know, love the obstacle. Don't just say, look, I have this obstacle that I have to overcome how I'm going to overcome it. Like love it. Like fall in love with the obstacle. And so, yeah, so I really like that book. And, you know, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

you know, like a lot of Ryan holidays books are derived from meditations and so those two I think those are big and those are just basically like mindset books. I'm glad you mentioned it. I'm a big fan of Ryan Hood as well. I think the whole trilogy

obstacles the way ego is the enemy and stillness is the key that all of those three are really amazing and I can only recommend Ryan as well so it was a great recommendation. Then maybe before we finish MJ is there anything that you would like to share, anything I should have asked you and did not, or any final piece of wisdom? I don't think so. This is great. This is great. I had fun. I love talking about this stuff, so I really appreciate you invite me on.

Thank you. I appreciate it as well. Someone who's been following and enjoying your work. I'm grateful that you joined me. I feel like the time flew so quickly, so we'll be happy to catch up in a time in the future. So thank you so much, MJ. And I will will keep following and supporting. Thank you. Thomas, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to Produce by with Tomer. Check out show notes for all the links and don't forget to like, subscribe and leave your feedback. Speak soon.