Produced By - One Bag, One Brand: Building While You Travel the World | #123: Alex Colhoun

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Alex Colhoun is a content strategist, brand builder, and former Twitch streamer who helps founders grow their presence online with standout storytelling and high-converting content. He’s worked with over 120 entrepreneurs, built one of the fastest-growing personal brands on LinkedIn, and continues to share the strategies that actually move the needle.In this episode, we explore Alex’s journey from streaming to strategy. You’ll hear how he built a massive Twitch following, pivoted into brand-building on LinkedIn, and developed a system for showing up online with clarity and consistency. He shares lessons on content creation, community building, and growing across multiple platforms, all while travelling the world.Connect with Alex:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackgaisford/https://www.instagram.com/jackgaisfordhttps://www.youtube.com/c/JackGaisford https://the-content-club.co.uk/Timestamps:00:00 – Cold open: from Twitch to content strategy01:02 – Intro and welcome01:26 – Meet Alex: creator, strategist, digital nomad02:31 – His surprising start on Twitch04:00 – Why he walked away from streaming success05:18 – From content to clarity: discovering brand building06:47 – Building trust across platforms08:11 – The mindset shift that changed everything09:43 – Why LinkedIn became his home base11:06 – The early days of showing up online12:38 – Creating systems for consistency14:15 – Why travel shaped his brand15:42 – Keeping creativity alive while moving around17:06 – How he balances business and lifestyle18:33 – The power of milestones and personal posts20:04 – What makes a brand “work” in 202521:49 – Building a community with intention23:30 – The truth about silent followers24:58 – Making content that connects (and converts)26:41 – What creators get wrong about growth28:23 – Cross-platform content that stays true to you30:04 – What people really buy when they follow you31:31 – His take on tools, batching, and burnout33:10 – Life on the road: the honest side of digital nomad life34:56 – His favourite countries, routines, and setups36:20 – Lessons from creating in different cultures37:48 – Advice he’d give his earlier self39:10 – Quick-fire: tools, platforms, creator habits40:58 – Final thoughts on freedom, systems, and staying human43:25 – Hitting 40k, birthday timing, and final reflections45:22 – Where to find Alex and closing thoughts47:00 – Outro and thank you 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.

My brand is essentially like a premium look. So high value and high quality photos on myself. I'll do video content. I'll do a lot of photos of myself. All my content is very authentic. So it's mainly behind the scenes of how I'm building my business now, my strategies that I'm using. So a lot of the content you will see on LinkedIn is like, oh, how to use this AI tool. This is how you build a personal brand, optimize your profile.

It's all these like more generic broad items that you can just probably go on the chat, TBT, and just ask like that question. You'll get the result for it. If you take my content, you're not going to be able to chat and get the same answer because it's more about my business. What I'm working on, and I'll talk a lot about what I've learned about the past, you know, XYZ's years of doing business. I'll even show examples of me doing my gaming stuff and how, like,

transported over all the skills I have now for my LinkedIn business. So it's really just showing behind the scenes, the strategy that you use and just how you run your business is the best type of content because people want to see the relatable stuff of you waking up and like, oh, I don't sit here for an hour, drink my coffee, I'm done for the day. I see here for 15 hours and get no results because I'm just testing new things, right? They want to see like the raw, real self of you building your business. 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, Alex. Thank you for Jinneth today and welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, man. Great to be on here and excited to answer some questions. So Alex, for those who don't know you, can you please introduce yourself? Yeah, of course.

So my name is Alex. I've been creating content on LinkedIn for over two and a half years now. We run a content agency, so we're essentially helping founders, other content, create their business, create their content, and essentially create their systems to maximize their time and their revenue just on LinkedIn. I was Alex looking at your background and at your experience, and it seems like that you've been like a gamer or a streamer. So what is actually your previous experience like?

Yeah, so I actually streamed on Twitch for seven years. I did some cringe games. I put Fortnite, Destiny. That was actually my first business of scale to six figures. I did that through actually high school and college. It was fantastic. It was very hard to scale and the revenue really wasn't there for how much time we were putting into it. I'm talking like 14, 15 hour days of just sitting in front of your metal monitor playing

fortnight. So it wasn't worth it. So then I eventually scaled on to the business I'm currently doing. Was it like a natural progression from your passion for gaming or did you see it as maybe to try some type of business as well from gaming? So I actually went to while I was gaming in college, I actually took entrepreneurship in college. And I learned a lot about different aspects of businesses, like the flow of like how these companies are being built. And I actually really got me interested in building my own type of business.

So I built my first educational company in college and it was a complete flop. But actually like taught me a lot of skills on billing in public, building behind the scenes. You're supposed to create content while you're building your business. So it doesn't just flop how it did. So it's kind of like a gradual increase in my interest in doing what I'm doing now. So if I didn't do the game, I haven't to go to college, I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. I like it because I spoke even with some previous guests that sometimes you get experience. And at that time, it might not seem that irrelevant or helpful.

But later on, you actually find out that it's so precious that it's actually been very helpful before. Oh, I'm 100%. Even like the studio that I have right now, the camera set up, the microphones, I've had this all from gaming. So it easily transitioned over to creating content for other founders. creators and myself. So it's been fantastic. And I can also imagine maybe it was different for you, but people usually struggle like to put themselves on the camera or like, you know, to speak to the camera, whether it's streaming, podcasting, or any videos. So what does it like for you in the beginning like with the streaming? Yeah, honestly was really hard. So I've been like the biggest introvert for

the like four or five years just straight. Really? I was expecting the opposite. Yeah. Honestly, man, like streaming really helped me at the start because I just hate showing my face. I didn't feel very confident myself. So I actually started streaming with just like a hand camera. So my camera is on my keyboard, my mouse, so you can only see my hands. And then eventually I started going to, you know, my face. Then I bought a better quality camera. And over time, I would just always show my face. I started going to in-person events. I went to like San Diego for TwitchCon. I've done in-person events for networking for LinkedIn. So it's just like a gradual thing where I just got more confident as I did the reps. So really the only way to do it is to just get yourself on

camera more. And then over time, you're just going to get so comfortable. And then once you can get to the in-person events, you're golden. I can only agree. And what about some numbers when it comes to your like a streaming career, whether it's, I don't know, subscribers or any milestones? Yeah, actually, so in 2020 or 2021, I was actually one of the largest Fortnite creators for the custom games we were running. So we were hosting like four, five, six hundred average viewers with over 2,000 subscribers, one of the largest ones. Unfortunately, my Discord. get banned. I got hacked and like it was insane. I had like police come into my house and everything so it was a

wild experience. Really? Even that's serious. Yeah the community in gaming and all that is just a lot different than what it is right now on LinkedIn so I'm kind of like more liking the LinkedIn community and the business community over like the old gaming community. So yeah the numbers were fantastic. Wow it sounds pretty cool and I saw also in your experience that you've been like a community manager on Discord right? Yep. So I guess that's something that really helps with building a community in general, because you can see like people often talking on LinkedIn about how important it is,

whether it's to build your community, your tribe, the people that you surround yourself with. So I guess that was also something very helpful later on. Oh yeah, I've built. I can't even like tell you how many communities have helped build on Discord. They actually used to be a server where I'd basically hop into a Discord, built their whole structure of their community. I'd help them from like to start to finish of growing their community, growing more members, hosting live Q&A calls with them.

So it was really just a whole process of just helping as many communities as I could. This was in gaming and crypto and NFTs and all these different niches I was able to help people basically grow their community. So it was a lot of fun. What will be some, for example, tips, whether it comes to building the community. I guess there are many, but maybe something that people underestimate or struggle with. Yeah, so really, it's more of a time game. So even for my school community right now we're running, it's obviously like kind of like

a Discord type thing. So really just being active and like showing up every single day is 100% necessary, especially for the host of the community. We are running calls every single day. I'm answering every single question. I mean like every single comment is answered. There's no channels that are going to be boring or dead or like not active. So really just showing up every single day answering questions, posting every single day. I call them engagement loop. So it's basically post that just constantly get engagement. So it's like asking a question. People answer questions on that post. you ask them more questions or just a simple loop of just constant comments and engagement. That's really what's going to get the community just be active nonstop.

Yeah. With time management with everything like that. You know, I'm telling you like there were days. Last week I spent 15 hours, 16 hours. It's really right here just on school, on LinkedIn, on calls and clients. Like it was, that's like a lot of my day to days are just 14, 15 hours of just straight working on whatever I'm doing. It's also part of just scaling in general is you have to be able to take the time, especially if we're doing LinkedIn and just business like full time.

If you're running another job, obviously can be a lot more difficult to do all these things. But if someone that's like as myself was doing this full time, it's just nonstop. So it's a lot of fun though. It's definitely my hobby. But I like as you say that because I feel like that, you know, people often try to look for shortcuts, whether it's, I don't know, talk only negatively about AI, but whether it's like, you know, with AI engagement, I'm sure that you've seen it a lot or outsourcing VAs. course it's helpful, but they can see that like someone like you who's built impressive following

communities, business and everything that you still spend so much time on it and you are actually the one who's showing up. Yeah, actually, that's funny you said that because my post today is literally on AI and like how people are just like, I'll go to my comment section. I can spot AI comment, real person, AI comment. So I always like, I'll literally tell people like, yo, stop using AI for your comments. It looks horrible. So, you know, I've definitely spent in a lot of my time. And even for all the clients that I work with. We just focus on, even some of the VAs that I've worked with in the past, they try to use AI for the comments.

Absolutely no. Comments is, it's supposed to be authentic, a genuine, like, you know, conversation between one person and another. So we just always focus on authentic engagement. That's really the only way to grow on LinkedIn is the, like, authentic side. Otherwise, you're going to show up, like, the millions of other people that are trying to do the exact same thing you're trying to do. So it's very important to keep, like, the genuine side of the business.

I only agree on that I'm glad you said it. And sorry, Alex, if you mentioned it before, but when we were talking about the gaming or streaming, why have you actually stopped with that? Because it seemed like that it was going well. So didn't you like see the career in that type of profession you were doing? Maybe you said it. I forgot so apologies. No, no, it's perfect.

I don't think gaming is a very healthy thing, especially if you're doing it for 14, 15 hours a day. You're also handling with a lot younger audience. So we're talking 12, 13 year olds that are just like sitting in front of the computer all day. So the toxic community, you finish like a 15 hour, you know, stream of playing video games and you just, you're mentally just feel so bad. Your head is pounding. It's hot in your room. It's just like it's kind of like a disgusting feeling after you're doing all this gaming for so long. So yeah, it was really nice, but it's a toll on everything.

The community, how you feel after it. You don't really see a feature either because it's like, oh, do I want to play video games on my life? Or do I want to network with awesome people that are also building a cool business and learn new things, right? So it's kind of like there was a cap at where I could do. Now, you could obviously start creating YouTube content and like kind of skills to be a different kind of creator, but I didn't really see myself in that community anymore, so that's why I pushed over to the business side,

which I was very interested in, and I love it now. So I think it's worth it. I'm glad to hear it. I can't, of course, I play games as well, but never been a big gamer, but I cannot imagine it's just gaming and sleep. And if there is any time for sleeping. That's probably it's like you're missing dinners.

Like, it's insane. I will say, too, like I've tried everything. I've done coding for two years. I was coding MacBook apps for literally two years. That was before high school. I actually, I had a really crappy iPod touch. I went to school. I traded it with a guy who had like a really bad alienware monitor or alien number

laptop. I traded my iPod for a laptop. I took his laptop. That's why I started coding on originally. And I actually started streaming on that too. So I was like a bunch of trading in high school to get my equipment started because I had no money, right? And then I did coding.

I've done AFTs. I've done crypto. I've done gaming. I've done everything you can think of, drop shipping, everything. until I found the one niche that I really like, which is what I'm doing right now. I think it's worth, like, definitely test different things. Exactly.

That's what I was about to say that. I think that's a great point, that it's worth trying different things to actually figure out what you like, what works for you, and what's worth sticking for the long term. It's like never, okay, I discovered LinkedIn

and it's going to work from now on. It actually takes like a few trailers of error, so that was a great point. Yeah, for sure. I want to start LinkedIn two and a half years ago, it was, not even close to what is now. There wasn't that many creators.

Some of the top careers where I know that have 800,000 followers had like 50, 60,000 back then. So it wasn't like a big creator platform yet. So it was a largest trial and error to see what worked. Because when I went on there, it was like, I didn't have much motivation. All just crappy posts I started creating.

Really bad content, actually. So it's just like one of those things where you just kind of take it full on and see what happens. Well, it's the same for all of us, the cringy first. Oh, dude. If I look back to years from now, man, I don't want to look at that anymore.

How did you actually, discover the platform or when it like clicked that that's the platform that you're going to focus on. Yeah. So as I was on Twitch, I meant to encrypt on stuff, I was, I built like 40,000 followers on Twitter. Now it's X. So on X, a lot of people were started talking about LinkedIn. I actually saw Jasmine on there. I saw Laura, a couple of the bigger creators on there. So I was like, oh, I'll take a look at LinkedIn where people posted over there. So I started basically repurposing my content from X over to LinkedIn. I got some of the tools that allowed you to just like kind of automatically post it over there. And then one day I actually went on to,

LinkedIn, kind of went through it, kind of built my connections a little bit. And I saw that there was some contact on there was like popping off like crazy. I saw people were actually able to be able to build a business. So I was like, okay, so right now X is more of, you know, the crypto, the gaming side of my audience. And it's these people don't want my educational stuff, right? My business stuff. So I went on to LinkedIn. I started posting stuff there. I had one post hit like, I think it was like 50 likes, but I was like, hmm, that's kind of crazy. I have like 100 followers on here. 50 likes. It's kind of crazy. So then I started a kick with more people, posting more content. It was starting to get better because I would take some of the ideas I saw from other creators. I'd make it really good. I also had my

awesome setup. So I was able to take that, put it on to LinkedIn. I think people kind of saw them. It was like, oh, yeah, this guy's an authority. Because I wasn't starting really fresh, right? I actually already had a fall on other platforms. Like I took that skills that I learned, put it to LinkedIn, and boom, I was starting to get more traction. And that's why I started building some free lead magnets, some paid products. And just over time, it just got better and better. And even today, like, I'm still improving my content. If I look at a month, back, the content, even like two months ago, some of the content I made doesn't even, like, I don't even like it compared to what I'm creating right now. So it's like always,

as long as you're open to just changing constantly and improving, you're going to find success in some sort of growth along the way. I agree. And I think it's a good thing that if you look at your old content, you don't really like it or you're not happy with it anymore because it shows that you keep improving. You've got different standards and you just do it differently. Oh, for sure. Yeah. If you don't cringe at your stuff two years ago, then you're obviously just not improving enough. So it's the indicator to tell. Like if you're improving it or if you need to work on stuff.

And just to give to the audience a bit of context, do you know, Alex, what's your current number of followers? It should be just almost 40K. Yeah, because it's literally, as we are recording right now, it's eight followers left from beautiful over here. Let's go. Yeah, we hit 30K. When you hit it, Alex, have you got any, I don't know, celebration

or are we going to celebrate it anyway? Honestly, I'll drop it in the school. There's like a win category, so we just always drop wins. So a couple weeks ago I had to post it really well. We got some new clients from it. So I'll like post that in there. So yeah, I'll definitely post in the wins category. I'm probably like in my generic posts.

Some like really good non-bS advice. Oh yeah, I hit 4,000. This is like my non-bS advice here. And yeah, that's actually good just what I do. Also my birthdays and two days. So I'll probably do a post on that as well. Maybe people, why don't follow Alex so that he hits that in two days? days, it's perfect. Exactly. I'll be my perfect birthday gifts. Yeah. And Alex, I'm sure that you get

these DMs because all of us do, like, such as what is your advice or any tips or I don't know, how to go viral because people are usually looking for these, I don't know, secrets or whatever. So if you get like a DM like this or someone asks you, what's your usual advice or what would you tell these people? I mean, I've been on LinkedIn for over two years and I've never had a post go insanely viral. I think some of my best content was like when I'm telling people that I'm hiring, for example, or some of like the, oh, I've hit 30,000, 20,000 followers. The content that we focus on is for results. So we're trying to build our business to get cash flow. We're trying to connect with the right people so that the audience that actually follows us, whether it's

1,000 or 2,000 people versus 100,000 people that, you know, don't actually want our stuff. It's a very specific audience that actually wants what we have to sell, what we have to offer. And you're kind of building like a tight-knit community. So really the easy way to do this is, number one, is creating content that's very consistent. So, for example, I'm posting every single day. If you don't have the time to do every single day, you post three times, four times a week. And that we just have that organic content out so you can nurture your audience. It's just valuable stuff, non-AI stuff.

That's like it actually makes sense. It's targeting the right audience. And then like the biggest thing you have to do with your content is going to be to send out, let's say, 100 connections every single week. I do that every single week, still to this day. I also send out around 50 to 100 comments on other creators in my niche. So, for example, I will comment on creators that target a very similar audience. So let's say they're talking about LinkedIn growth, LinkedIn content,

then their business on LinkedIn. I'll find those creators. I'll make a list of 50 to 100 people. And I comment every single morning, boom, boom, boom, boom on all these creators. It's not like just like a, oh, great post kind of comment. It's like an actual comment regarding that creator. So I'll have like a real clever. Yeah.

So even if it makes, it's not valuable at all, I'll like have an like an authentic conversation with the creator. It could really be something stupid about coffee or whatever. but at least it's like an actual comment and you're like, you're putting your face out there. The more of your little profile pictures shows up on the timeline, the more people can find you, go to your profile, check out your stuff.

Boom, you've got new followers and you've probably got new engagement. Even if they're not going to buy your stuff as 99% of people that go to your profile are not going to buy your stuff, at least you have a new audience member who's going to go through your free stuff. They're going to follow you. They're going to post, like, comment on your post, overall increase the engagement.

So those are all very important. And really the last thing is when you post on LinkedIn, around like it's like the first 90 minutes. That's like the most crucial part to in time to get engagement. Otherwise your post doesn't get sent to second and third degree connections. It kind of stays in your first degree network. So it's really important to engage as much as possible, get as much comments, repost, et cetera, when you first start and publish that post versus waiting four hours

then trying to get some engagement. So that initial engagement is very crucial. I like it. I agree. And I think it's especially great advice with the connections. I think that's something that people underestimate. or maybe don't realize. And definitely something that I haven't been doing before,

such as you've got a limit of connection that you can send per week. Of course, you don't have to use all of those. But at the same time, take advantage of it because it's really helpful. Oh, 100%. I've been doing that for, like, literally since I started LinkedIn, just send out the connections. It's the easiest way to meet new people. And I'm not saying send out connections where it's like, hey, I'm selling this,

buy it. It's more like, hey, like, I love what you're doing here, let's connect and maybe like join a podcast at some point or something like that. So you're not connecting to sell to people. You're connecting to actually build maybe some French shift down the line, maybe do some collab posts, have people actually engage with your stuff. It's good to have a community growing with you at the same time,

have like a really good support group as you're trying to build your own personal brand and business on the platform. Exactly. Just grow your network. And so Alex started on LinkedIn. Have you already had an idea of the business that you want to start or what you want to focus on? Or when did you basically come up with, you know,

the idea of what you're going to focus on with your business. Yeah. So I mean, ever since I started on social media in general, I've always been about creating content. Creating content's been my biggest thing. And honestly, that content is the way to grow. Like that's like how to make money and how to grow,

just generally. So on all the platforms I've been on, it's been the number one thing for me is just create content to grow, make money, sell stuff. So when I got to LinkedIn, I was like, well, I could do that too here. People aren't really creating content yet. So it's like, oh, I'll create my awesome content

that I'd create on all my other platforms. And I'll show people. want to do it. So essentially that's kind of how I started. I dropped my first, my first ever paid product was in August of 2023. Yeah, 2020. 23 of August. It did, it did numbers because I really was building that for like six months. It's like the first ever product I had built. That one did absolute numbers because I was like also was a very early creator on the platform. But yeah, it's kind of what I've been doing all on my other platforms. I kind of just took all the information I had, the skills I had and just brought to LinkedIn. I mean, that makes sense.

And as you say that what does like, for example, the company. like before because of course it was early but I assume there were some people already compared to now because I feel like that now you got like every other person is focusing on personal branding or some design so it's quite full festive so what was it like before compared to now yeah honestly it's not just LinkedIn it's every social media platform in general but specifically on LinkedIn it's everyone is trying to do it now you'll have people that shouldn't be doing it are trying to do it right because they're literally working all their side jobs they've got their like side hustles and they're trying to build on LinkedIn. So everyone's just trying to do it right now. The way I see it, though,

is competition, in my opinion, is still the same as was before because if you're creating your own personal brand, your genuine content, you're creating good content and you know what you're selling and who you're selling to, the competition isn't really there because you have the valuable stuff. It's so good where people are going to find you no matter what. So you're kind of just building like, I don't look at other people's competition. I just look at them as like friends and inspiration to do better in my business. So I've honestly never looked at other people's competition, especially when I'm building your content and you're trying to build your empire, right? I don't think it's good to have competition because I'd rather have all these people

as my friends, right? That can kind of build alongside them. We can give each other inspiration tips and maybe some of our strategies we're using right now. So it's definitely a lot more people building on the platform now. So you can't just, you know, have half-ass content. But if you're creating good stuff and your own authentic stuff, you're going to actually show up and get results in the platform. That is a good point. I was about to ask you, maybe you kind of answer it now, but what it would be like your USB or your competitive advantage over the others. Yeah, honestly, for me, it's going to be, my brand is essentially like a premium look. So I try to build a premium look for my brand.

So high value and high quality photos on myself. I'll do video content. I'll do a lot of photos of myself. All my content is very authentic. So it's mainly behind the scenes of how I'm building my business right now, my strategies that I'm using. So a lot of the content you will see on LinkedIn is like, oh, how to use this AI tool. This is how you build a personal brand, optimize your profile.

All these more generic broad items that you can just probably go on the chat, TBT and just ask like that question. You'll get the result for it. Yeah, that anyone can do, right? Exactly. If you take my content, you're not going to be able to chat and get the same answer, obviously, because it's more about my business. What I'm working on, and I'll talk a lot about what I've learned about the past,

you know, XYZ years of doing business. I'll even show examples of me doing my gaming stuff and how, like, transported over all the skills I have now for my LinkedIn business. So it's really just showing behind the scenes, showing the strategy that you use and just how you run your business is the best type of content because people want to see the relatable stuff of you waking up and like, oh, I don't sit here for an hour, drink my coffee and I'm done for the day. I see here for 15 hours and get no results because I'm just testing new things, right? They want to see like the raw, like real self of you

building your business trying to scale to, let's say, seven figures. That's actually one of the new video series I started was scaling from six to seven figures. And I'm just showing the process, like, oh, it's not easy. It sucks. Like there's a lot of times where I'm just completely tired. I don't want to wake up like it's the weekend. I don't want to work, but I work on weekends anyways. So it's just really like showing the authentic and real self as the USP and also the way that I grow. I like it.

Yeah. And as I've been doing some research or having a look at your online presence before, whether it's of course LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram X. I really like your content. I guess I'm a bit biased with the video as well because I like the video. But it's true thing that the video content that you share, whether it's like the reals on Instagram or videos on YouTube, I really like it. and yeah, I encourage people to have looked because it's more relatable.

I think it's also interesting because not that many people do it. So it's actually something that makes you stand out. And I think also great point that you said, it shows a bit more, like more of the effort. They sort like, as he said, chat GPT, but it's like, you know, working behind the scenes, making your effort with the video content and all the stuff. So it's great stuff. I think it's also important if you are doing LinkedIn not to try to focus. on every platform at the start. The reason why I'm doing some long-form YouTube content now,

I never was a big YouTuber, but I'm obviously trying to start my long-form now to funnel people over to my school, to my LinkedIn, to my other platforms. So I think it's really good to focus on LinkedIn first through a pretty good following, really master the content, build that strategy, get that scheduling down where you don't have to spend as much time on creating content anymore on LinkedIn. And you can start going to YouTube, create long-form content. You can easily promote that on LinkedIn, and then you can promote your LinkedIn on your YouTube, kind of vice versa, kind of funnel it into your free lead magnets, your paid offers. You kind of start with LinkedIn, then get over to YouTube,

and you can even create YouTube shorts, and then those shorts can really be produced on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, whatever you want to do. You can publish all that content onto every single platform. So you kind of like start on LinkedIn, master it, and then slow lever off to other platforms. You can then monetize your audience that way. That's been kind of what's working really well for me.

I actually did LinkedIn for two years before even starting YouTube at all, so I just wanted to master one platform before I went to the next one. It's the great power of repurpose, isn't it? You do one longer video, then you can cut for other platforms and you've got the content like for the whole month or for how long? Yeah, it sounds like it's really easy. The only problem is some platforms, like even YouTube shorts, Instagram and TikTok, all the short platforms, they're very different.

There's a very different audience every single platform. TikTok, the retention, right? People just are they scrolling so fast, not even watching the hook. So you have to like really like hunker down that hook on that video. Instagram is more aesthetic. It's a little more premium, so you've got to focus on like a little bit different vibe for your videos. YouTube shorts, I don't even know yet.

So we're just kind of posted on there. But there's a very different audience for your platform. So you kind of like have to take your long form content. And then you can't just repurpose the same that you can. That's kind of what I'm doing right now. But I'm kind of testing out different videos in each platform to see what works since the audiences are just so different. Right. And even on LinkedIn, the video UI right now for the scrolling is pretty bad.

So we've been testing horizontal videos and they've been working a lot better. Same with the horizontal photos. They're working phenomenally. So we've actually went from doing vertical videos that you could scroll on LinkedIn to now horizontal. It's working great. So I'll probably test it after four or five months and see how it goes. It's a good idea for me as well. I've never taught as much because I know that before, you know, when they introduced the button on the LinkedIn app,

probably they wanted to push it a bit more. They didn't suddenly disappear. So what never knows? What's trending and what's going to be next big thing on LinkedIn? Oh, for sure. We're like even since I run a content agency, we're obviously testing different content styles, videos. We're testing Karrasel. always testing to see what's working right now. And we saw creators were getting like a drop in

like 70, 80% impressions on the vertical videos just because people aren't scrolling the videos, right? They're just looking at their feed, probably like look at the same creators every day they follow. So those horizontal, you can obviously like it looks better too. You can create a lot more in a frame on a horizontal video. It's a little more of a YouTube style. So it's been working really well. So I think it's worth trying if if you're trying to do any sort of video or constant on LinkedIn for sure. I think so too. And after all, the best way to find out. is always to try it by yourself. Yeah.

What about Alex threats from meta? Have you got experience? And if so, what's your experience like? No, man, I tested that for maybe three weeks when it first came out. I do not like it at all. It's like all three. It's so bad. I know one of the scheduling tools I have, it actually takes my, well, I used to.

It would take my ex post and throw them on the threads automatically for me. But it's just one of those platforms where I don't feel like I want to spend time in it because I already got Instagram, and my Instagram stuff automatically goes to Facebook. So it don't post automatically the threads, but I'm not going to go onto the app. I don't even have the app on my phone. But I'm not going to go on the app and comment on stuff. I've never really tested it. But for all the careers I've talked to that are a creator on Facebook and Instagram,

not really worth getting into. And yeah, you can post on it, but we haven't seen any results on it. So we've kind of scrapped that app. I was just curious because I think I got maybe a bit interested or wanted to check it out to when it came out. But then I feel like I never really heard everyone talking about it or even kind of mentioned. So I wanted to know your experience. They rushed the launch and they just spent so much money on it, but it was so unoptimized.

And something, because they were trying to fight with X, right? This is a time where they were competing with X, see which platform was better. Obviously, X is a way better job. But they rush it so fast to compete with X. And none of their actual features they had were optimized yet. There were so many bugs. It was laggy. The app would crash when you're on it.

So I think that actually took away a lot of the instant viewers and the people that download the app because their first impression was so bad, they probably haven't even tried it again yet since it's gotten better. So it kind of ruined the launch on that one. It's kind of impacting the long term. Are you struggling to stay consistent on LinkedIn? Fanpost helps you create high-quality posts in minutes so you can write faster, show up more, and stress way less. Built by creators for creators is the easiest way to grow your presents without burning out. Try it free at fanpost.com. And the next one, Alex, was I was about to ask you about school, which you mentioned before.

But now after we discussed your experience with Discord, it makes much more sense that basically when you started school, you were already the master. But can you tell us more about your community on school and maybe why you chose the platform as well? Yeah. So first, why I chose it. I've tried Discord. I've tried Kajabi. I've tried Circle. I've tried all the communities. Now, for gaming, yes. Discord is. is phenomenal. People are young, they know to use it. I tried, I launched an educational company in college on Discord. Blopped. I tried it again. I tried launching my Discord community from my LinkedIn. It's just too complex. It's too confusing. There's too many buttons. There's too many channels.

There's too many things going on. So it's just not the right fit for a LinkedIn audience. We're trying to build our business. We're just trying to hop on calls and just talk about, you know, what we're trying to do. So it didn't work. Now, Kajabi, a little bit too complex, had too many features and too expensive what you get. So then on school, it's perfect. So the modules are very easy, and you can build a freemian model. So essentially people can join in for free. And then from there, inside the course, inside the school, you can upsell your paid module so they can pay monthly.

They essentially have a free tier, let's say a $20 tier, and then $80 tier. So you can upsell within the community. But that way you have all the community join a free school community. And inside that, if people want to learn more, if they want to get your full systems, the coaching, they can then upgrade, right? So it's a really easy process from going from free to paid without having to send people to a lead magnet and then to an email list. It's all in one spot, which I really, really like.

It sounds good to me. I've never tried it, honestly. And I assume that it's also something that you enjoy, based on your previous experience, like building a community, like coming back to what you did before. Yeah, it's because when I used to do Discord, I would spend, you know, I would just sit in the voice calls and just talk to my community for hours.

So it's nice to go back to something like this where I can kind of create that audience, where it's not just creating constant LinkedIn and answer my comments. I can literally sit down in a more, like, tight community and just talk to people, answer questions, we can do accountability calls. I love it a lot more. So it kind of brings me back to the old days,

but also I get my new skills and what I like to do now. So I would definitely recommend building a free community. It's awesome. And Alex, one thing that I still have on my mind is what is it like with your time management? Because it sounds like you manage so many things and do it on high level. So how do you manage everything?

Honestly, I don't even know how I manage it sometimes. It's a lot, though. So I typically start my mornings. at 6 a.m. And then from there, I've got like very specific systems. So I'll do like some certain client work every single day from about 6 to 8 a.m. And then from there, I typically start my own content. We do content work for tons of different clients. We do outreach. We do content design. So there's a lot of client work that goes throughout the day. My sales calls are limited to five to six a month max. Calls are something I don't really believe in, especially because I can probably

just send a DM or an email about it. So unless a client, like a new client is an onboard, they really want to start with me, but they want to get, you know, more of the personal touch. I'll do a sales call with them. But my sales cards are very quick, but to the point they're not salesy, I'm just basically showing, okay, we're going to do this for you. If you want it, you can start here. If not, you can get our free stuff here, right? So we limit sales calls.

The only calls we do is stuff like this with other creators or with our current clients. And then, of course, in the school community. So in terms of the actual management of the time, I just have this bad boy right here. It's a notebook. It's got all my to-do lists, tasks. It's out my schedule, priorities, and the to-does. So anything that's like I have to do it today is in priorities. The to-do list is just things I wanted to get done by the end of the night.

So until like this thing is all checked off, I don't go to sleep. And I've got the actual schedule done. I use my MacBook for reminders so I know exactly what I'm doing. I honestly have a really bad memory. So I'll have four things scheduled today and I'll totally forget. So I've got my phone reminders. I got my Mac reminders. But this thing is like the only way I'm like actually able to stay within my time management is the manual writing down.

Because if I put stuff in my calendar, I probably will forget. If I write it down in a book, I won't forget. It's like actually in my brain. So it's really the only way to actually get things done. And also travel a lot. It's like I've got tons of flights every single month. I've fallen probably over 250 times the last two years.

So a lot of my work gets done on flights. You said you flew 250 times. Did I hear correctly? Oh, wow. Yep. Around the US. Yeah, I was just about to say that it's something that we should discuss before Dary Corrine, so I was about to ask you more.

and oh my god I wasn't expected such a high number it's what I call enjoying life while working because people often talk about this digital nomad life that you can work from anywhere so I think you're like a perfect example traveling so much smashing it with your work even the personal brands are really well done

yeah I will say too a lot of people think that they need like this crazy budget to travel I mean I've traveled to 50 countries in last two years I've flown over 200 times and we all stay at hostels I will not go to restaurants. I'll like street food. So it's kind of a perfect example because I like to show people that you don't need to stay at five-star hotels.

You don't need to get sponsorships to stay at hotels for free. You don't have to go to these crazy hotels or whatever it is. You just need a place to sleep and a place to work. That's essentially how I work, right? So I'll stay at hostel, I go to cafes. I'm comfortable. So it works for me. So you don't really, and also I was a huge introvert like for years.

Travel is the only reason why I'm not introvert anymore is because I would have to talk to people. I would solo travel in countries like, you know, I'd be. I've been to Oman, I've been to Saudi Arabia, I've been to over Asia, I've been to these countries that most of the Western world doesn't actually go to. So I've experienced everything. I've experienced some of the craziest stuff, like near-death experiences even. So it's gotten me out of my comfort zone.

I have to talk to people. I don't know the languages. So it's honestly like if I didn't travel, I would not have my business how it is today. That's 100%. Would you mind sharing any of your interesting experiences, just as you said that? Yeah, I mean, we've been close to Taliban before, which is a little scary as a U.S. person. Yeah, we've been, I actually almost fell off a scooter in Bali.

That was pretty scary because I've never written like a scooter before, like one of the mopeds. So in Indonesia is a crazy place for driving. So that was another crazy experience. Food. I went to India. Almost died. I was bedridden for four days.

Worst experience ever. And like that's different breed. If you think like you've had bad food, man, this was the most in, like, in experience on my life. So I was starting up for day. almost died crazy I just wanted to go home after that I had more I actually went to Singapore after that I had more trips going but I just wanted to go home back to the US back to my bed so we've had we've had so many experience with the cool people though I think the coolest

part of travel and just like meeting the locals of places and you just like really get to talk about just how they're living you kind of see you go back home and you're like damn I'd have it nice like this is crazy so you get humbled you learn a lot you become more of an extrovert you like to talk to people but even like my calls my clients and stuff like it makes it more like it's just a better interaction like I know how to talk about it's just a better interaction like I know how to talk to people. I'm not much of interest anymore. I actually like to speak to people. So it's been a great adventure. And as you said that, does it mean that you're someone who maybe underestimates safety or doesn't pay as much attention or is it like a literary coincidences

or something outside of your control? No, so everything that's been out of my control, honestly. I mean, somewhat. I'm a someone who likes to take moderate risk. So I will take risk that, you know, will get me out of my comfort zone, but risk that won't obviously get me in huge. harm's way. Same for my business. I'll take a lot of risk. Even for like investing, I'll do risk where I want to make some sort of good ROI, but I also don't want to just destroy my future for what I'm doing. So it's a safer business, same for traveling, instead for life. It's that moderate risk is really what's gotten me where I've gotten. But I'm usually the person that's the safe one and the people I'm with are the ones that don't care at all. I'm like, I'm like, oh, okay, we can't do this.

We can't do that. We shouldn't do this. We shouldn't do this. Oh, we should go there. Right. So that's actually me. That's the safe one, which is kind of funny. But that's kind of how it is the moderate risk is the most. I'll do high risk. sometimes, but usually just like right in between is perfect for me. Yeah. And I'm sure that this is a question that many people ask when probably a tough one to answer, but what is the place that you maybe like the most and why? Or some of the places that you like you. Yeah. I would say I've got two. The first one's Oman. The second one is Romania. Now, the reason why I say this is because one, I don't like tourists. I don't like going to like Western Europe. I mean, I've been to all these

countries, by the way. I've been to every tourist spot you can imagine, right? You know, Paris, Spain, all these places. But Oman, the reason why is you've got everything. You've got the culture. You've got no tourist. You've got mountains. You've got beaches. You've got oaseses. You've got just beautiful architecture. You've got agriculture. You've got beautiful roads. You can drive from the mountains. I mean, it's just very open. You can kind of do whatever you want. Obviously, there's laws in place, but it's just you kind of feel like a new person there. Still got all the U.S. stuff. You got all the U.S. stuff. You got McDonald's. You got all the good stuff. But you got everything there without the tourists. And it's just different. The different culture.

the food in the Middle East is the best. And Romania, Romania was beautiful. It's some of the best nature that I've seen. The people were amazing. I actually went to an EDM concert there in like a little town, zero tourists. There was only Romanians. Beautiful. Also always loved Romania.

You can basically take a train from one side of the country the other and it's just sunflowers. A whole trip. It's like a four hour journey of just sunflowers. So it's a very cool country, awesome castles. And no tourists. Okay, we'll see as tourists in the capital. That's just like for party. And you go outside of the capital.

You're free. I'm glad to hear it because I've got a very close friend, Yonut. I hope that he's listening when this is out. And I will send it to him especially because he's from Romania and he will be very happy to hear this. I'm glad that you mentioned it. Yeah, Brasov, Kerova and Bucharest, all three cities we went to.

Beautiful. Oh my God, he's from Brasov. Wow. That was like one of my favorites I've been to in Romania. It was sick. Oh, wow. Yeah, I loved it there. And sorry for the interruption?

You were about to say Stokonos. Oh, I was just saying. And I know some people think that like when you travel, you're just trying to go to like these luxury places. But I like to do a mix. So obviously I'll travel around the U.S. have been to almost all the states here. I do Europe,

which is a little more, you know, modernized. And we'll do Eastern Europe, which some of the cities are a little bit less modernized, but still very nice. We'll do Middle East. We'll go to some places that are just not modernized at all.

So you get like kind of a different mix of culture there. But in Asia, obviously, the economy is just not even close where it is like the U.S. in some of these cities. So it's nice to see like a bit of the U.S., but of U. Europe, but of Asia, I've been to Africa. So I've hiked the highest mountain in North Africa, which is really cool.

Yeah, I've done it all. Then the question is, what is left on your list? Ooh. Moldova. That's not my list. North Macedonia, probably the stands, Kazakhstan, war of Africa at some point. Australia, I haven't hit, New Zealand. It would be beautiful.

Haven't hit Alaska yet or Hawaii. And I don't know if you want to answer this question, but was there a place that you actually haven't enjoyed? If you don't want to you, don't have to. for this one. The only thing I will say is some countries in Asia, I won't say specifically in case anyone's from there, but I will say some places in Asia, when you travel for a long time, and I'm talking like two, three months at a time, there's just some places where you're just not comfortable anymore. You're just like, oh, I want to go back to a nice place where I can get

a, it's a comfortable place to sleep, a comfortable place to like, you know, not feel scared of the bugs or the heat or whatever. So I will say it's only been because I've been traveling for a long time. So I'm talking like two months in. I'm like, man, I'm done. But otherwise, no, I haven't really had any bad experience. I'm just open to anything, really. And same for when I'm working. Like, if I'm building my business on LinkedIn, for example, or doing my YouTube videos, whatever it is,

I can pretty much work anywhere where there's Wi-Fi. I just need Wi-Fi. I've been to some places where Wi-Fi is just so hard to find, which is typically on my ranking of, I don't like this place. It's not because the actual clutch, just because I can't work, right? So that's the only thing I'd really say is I don't like the city because I can't work, essentially.

Yeah, that makes sense. And Alex, when it comes to, like, a personal development, do you read any books? and if so, have you got any recommendations? That's funny. I actually haven't read a book since probably third grade, the Mace Runner. Yeah, I read the Bible every morning, but I don't read any, I got any South Help books or product or anything like that.

Yeah, okay, okay. I mean, no worse. And what about the movies? Have you got any favorite films? Oh, man. Or I used to watch all the horror movies you could think of. Now I just watch romance and comedy movies, like rom-comies. Oh, the progression.

That's all I watch it, man. But I will say, I don't really have time to watch movies. So if I do, it's probably on a plane or in the airport when I'm just like exhausted. But at home, nah, we're on that grind, you know. We're on that 15 hour days. Ain't no time for movies. No, I understand. And have you got like any, let's say people or personas that are for you inspiration

or that you follow, you know, whether it's for their, I don't know, mindset or the business or the career, you know, any of inspirations? Yeah. So actually the first course I bought on LinkedIn was from Matt Gray. So Matt Gray had his founder of us course. that he brought. It was like 150 bucks, I think. But that actually was the big game changer for me. It actually changed my entire business because I got the tools that he used. I started writing how his system that he had. I really built his entire framework from that one course. This was two years

ago. That was like the best investment of $150 I have ever spent. People like always talk down about courses and how bad they are. But when you're first starting out, if you don't know what you're doing, these courses are an absolute game change. Like that man like actually changed how my business runs say on like the actual like what I've been doing. So I would say like if you find like a couple careers, I would say stick with two to three people max and just follow what they do. If you have too many opinions from, you know, 10, 15, to 20 people, you have too many conflicting ideas. So I would say stick with two to three people that have very similar ideas, have very similar systems and just focus on those two or three people. And eventually if you want to try something else, you can move on. But just

stick with a couple people that you trust, you like their content and just focus on their systems and then like whatever they're building. And then that's how you can kind of like take inspiration from the ideas from how you can kind of grow your business from what they're doing. I like it. And I think that especially in the beginning, when you just don't know when you are new and you need some kind of guidance. If you come across like the course from someone who's established who's way ahead of you, I think it can be a great accelerator and step forward. Oh, 100%. I mean, I think a lot of people too, when they start, they're so not open to gain help. They just want to do everything themselves. I'm one of those people. I don't like hiring people to

sometimes. I don't like hiring graphic designers. I will still on Photoshop. for five hours and try to figure something out, right? Even though I'm not a designer, I'm not a video editor, but I will sit there and figure it out. So I think it's 100% worth if you need help, just go seek it. You don't have to spend, you don't have to spend like $10,000 on some like crazy coaching program or whatever, but just get some help, get a course, go on YouTube, search up some free videos, but just look for help first, grow that knowledge base and then it's going to help you accelerate way fast and then trying to like do everything yourself

at the beginning. Completely agree, especially like these days when YouTube is full of LHR. tutorials on everything and it's often for free so good to take advantage of that and one thing I do too is there's going to be videos that are like 45 minutes one hour I don't know if I just want to sit there for an hour

you can just copy the transcript or in the chat jibb and say hey like what is exactly this person is saying like how tell me what they're saying in this video and give it to me very detail and you just get a boil point list and you learn it in like 30 seconds so I'll love that as well I agree and Alex I don't want to make this sound like interview question

but what are like your plans for the future, if you've got any specific goals, ambitions, or targets? I mean, I'm moving. So this is my last month in the studio here in Nashville, moving out to Florida soon. And then almost right now, we've got the series. We're trying to scale from six to seven figures. My biggest thing, though, is I don't care about money. I just care about helping people as much as I can.

So money just kind of comes with that, right? So how big can I build my audience? How many people can I help? And I started my school community last week. So my goal right now is to really get that school community to be, be biggest and number one school community for LinkedIn creators and for careers in general. Just build a massive community that we can help people. People can help each other. And that way I don't have to be there 24 or seven. We've got people that can help each other.

And then really just in terms of like the business, just not spending 15 hours a day doing what I do. Yeah, you actually surprised me that you launched school just last week. I thought that you've been running it for some time. So impressive that it's been such a short. No, it was six days ago. In terms like building a community, like on school, for example, it's one of those things where I think I should have done earlier. but I've already been testing out different things. I've been tested out different types of content and the ways to like fun of my audience different places.

We've got like the five-day free email course. We've got lead magnets here and there. So essentially the best thing we found, even from testing from months and months and months, is a free community. You can throw your lead maggots inside it, but that way people can join. They can find everything in one spot.

They'll have to go to this email list, this email list, this email, or like this piece of content, this YouTube video. They've got a central hub of just everything that they need. It's a roadmap. It's a 90-day roadmap. They can get quick wins.

They have a roadmap of what exactly. they're going to do for the next 90 days. It's a clear path from zero followers to 10K followers from $1,000 to $10,000 a month. It's like a clear roadmap of one resolve that they want to get in the next 90 days. So I think that's one reason why a community like that is so important. I agree.

And I think as we've been discussing, you describe it really well. And now, as you just said it, Alex, can you please summarize where people can find you, follow you, and promote any of your services? I mean, yeah, for sure. I would say just if you want to follow me, just Alex Call Hootin on LinkedIn. And then from there, you're going to find my school.

If you want to join the school community, we're pretty much building the biggest school community right now for LinkedIn creators. We've got daily calls for accountability, workshops, masterminds, guest speakers. We've got everything in there. So if you're actually serious about building your brand, I'd say join the school. Just join my LinkedIn.

We've got YouTube videos all going on there every single week too. So if you need the value, if you're trying to grow your brand or business, it's going to be the place to be. As always, I will add the links to the show notes. And then where you last question, Alex, Is there anything that I should have asked you and did not or any final piece of advice or message

or anything that you would like to share before we finish? Honestly, I think if you're someone that's wanting to build a business and build their personal brands on LinkedIn, I would say the first thing you should do, besides everything else, is just build your audience first before you sell anything. I made the same mistake. I've tried to launch products before where I tried to just build it behind the scenes

for three months and then launch it, get zero sales. Really the biggest thing is build the, audience first, build in public, show what you're building. Let's say you're building like a $20 product. Show what you're building. Show it inside the, you know, behind the scenes, what's inside the modules. Just build in public, show behind the scenes, launch it in three months, and you're going to sell a lot more versus if you just create your normal boring content. You're building a product behind the scenes and then you just randomly launch a product in your email and saying, hey, we just launched a product today. It's not going to work. So my advice,

build an audience first. Sell after. I think it's done perfect advice to finish with Alex. I want to say a big thank you not only for the value that you share, but also it was very fun and great conversation. I like the content that you share. I encourage people to follow you. As I said, I will add any links to the show notes. And yep, I will keep following, supporting, and I will be looking forward to seeing the pictures from Sunny Florida.

So thank you for joining me, Alex. Heck yeah. Rishina, man. It's been awesome on the podcast too. Definitely check out your content as well. Appreciate it, man. Thanks for listening to Project Buy with Tom. Check the show notes for all the links and don't forget to subscribe, like and share your feedback.

Speak soon.