Welcome to episode 11 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

Part one covered repelling content (politely showing bad-fit clients the door), attracting content (calling out exactly who you do want), pricing content (transparency wins, even when you're not the cheapest) and sales content (answering the objections people are too polite to voice). Every piece of content is another brick in your fortress, and the more structure you have, the more respect you command and the fewer objections you face.

This is good customer service in content form: helping people make the best buying decision, even if that means recommending someone else, like the store Santa sending shoppers to a rival department store and winning customers for life because of it. Our website buyer's guide explained why sites cost anywhere from free to a hundred grand, and openly told smaller-budget folks we weren't their best option. The right-fit clients trusted us even more because it was obvious we weren't after a quick buck. Bonus: a buyer's guide is brilliant hand-raising, bottom-of-funnel lead magnet material.

The moment someone hands over money, their next thought is "what happens now?", and if they have to ask, your communication has failed. Our thirty-one step "how we build your website from start to finish" article killed buyer's remorse and, wildly, cleaned up our actual process just by forcing us to write it down. Even Lyndsay's hairdresser nails this: booking confirmation emails covering where to park, skin tests and how to prepare. Most clients won't read every step; they just want proof you've got it handled, which is exactly how luxury brands like Rolex and Porsche operate.

Most company values get written once and filed away forever. Real culture content proves them: the clothing brand claiming radical transparency shows you its factories, costs and wages; the startup Kinso built a huge waiting list from a social team openly taking the mick out of the owners. If you claim you're "really funny" or "informal" but your website reads like it was written by ChatGPT, that mismatch is the giveaway.

Our agency value is respecting people's time, so we pay everyone we interview (around seventy five to a hundred pounds), hired or not. Someone shared it on Reddit, it racked up hundreds of thousands of views, half the comments called it a lie, and we've never once had a no-show or struggled to hire since. Compare that to tens of thousands a year for a recruitment agency. Culture content doesn't just attract clients; it attracts talent, and being honest about who wouldn't thrive with you ("if you need micromanaging, we're not your place") filters both.

Six years since writing the book, this is still the single biggest lever for views, leads and sales. If you're ranting to your husband, wife or the dog about bad advice in your industry, that's your signal: say it publicly, because staying quiet is a disservice to your audience. Strong opinions repel some people, and that's the point; the more conviction we put out, the less clients challenge us, and we only attract people who already trust how we work. If a full rant feels too spicy, soften it with "I need your opinion on this..." as your stepping stone.

Here's my favourite way to handle scope creep, or price hagglers, or "I can't afford this." Name the exact struggle your audience recognises, promise your favourite fix, and they're stopping mid-scroll to find out what it is.

Check out Vidonary.com to Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

Welcome to episode 10 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

1. The stress of bad-fit clients is real (and it put Martin in hospital)

When we started out, we took on anyone with a budget ("we'd have taken your bins out if you'd paid us"), and the wrong clients (the ones who don't respect you, negotiate on price, email at all hours and treat you like an employee) took a genuine toll. Martin ended up in hospital with myoclonus, being tested for Parkinson's, MS and a brain tumour, before a doctor asked whether it might be stress. That's why we spent the pandemic writing Content Fortress: not to win clients, but to stop this happening to anyone else.

2. The mindset shift: bad clients are your responsibility

The hardest thing to accept is that if the wrong kind of client keeps getting through, that's on you. Have your five minute moan, then ask: what content can I create so this never happens again? Being selective isn't precious; it's good business. The right clients pay more, so you need fewer of them, the work is more enjoyable, and you're not absorbed by the handful causing all the stress.

3. Pillar one: repelling content

Our article "Seven reasons you shouldn't work with us" was therapeutic to write and transformative to use: we'd send it to every enquiry before booking a call, and people either quietly disappeared (the wrong ones anyway) or came back ten times more excited and committed. Frame it as doing them a favour: "if you're just starting out, we're probably too expensive for you" or "if you want a yes-man, we'll push back, so we're not the right fit."

4. Pillar two: attracting content

The flip side: call out exactly who you do want. Our article "Why large businesses should work with small agencies" listed everything wrong with big agencies (passed to juniors, endless waiting, staff turnover) and landed us our biggest ever web design client, back when the "agency" was just the two of us. Work out who your dream client currently hires, what those companies do badly, and create content around how you do it better.

5. Pillar three: sales content

Don't ask "why would someone hire me?"; ask "why would someone NOT hire me?" and create content answering every objection, because prospects are usually too polite to voice their concerns out loud. If the worry stays unspoken, it goes round and round in their head and they never buy. Answer it publicly ("here's why we're more expensive than others in our industry") and you're typically the only one in your space doing it, which builds a ton of trust.

6. Pillar four: pricing content

Nobody should ever get on a sales call with you and be shocked at the price. Even for bespoke services you can share ranges, what pushes costs up or down, and why you charge what you do (fashion brand Everlane goes as far as breaking down materials and shipping costs for every product). The businesses that publish prices win, especially with millennials and Gen Z who'd rather do anything than book a call. As Lyndsay says: that's a hill she'll die on. Pillars five to eight are coming in the next episode.

Hook of the day: "I can't believe it's 2026 and I still have to remind people to..."

Perfect rant fuel, and the rantiest content is the best: I can't believe it's 2026 and I still have to remind businesses to put their prices on their website, or list prices on the menu. It works because it combines disbelief, an opinion and a nudge your audience knows they probably need, all in one line.

Check out Vidonary.com to Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

Here's episode 9 (no number in the transcript, so nudge me if I've drifted):

Welcome to episode 9 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

Only 1% of LinkedIn users publish content more than once a week; everyone else is lurking, engaging or criticising. And there's a subset of critics who've made their entire personality about picking others apart while never creating anything themselves, all under the banner of "providing a public service". Watching those pile-ons play out makes business owners either water their content down until it's weak, or stop posting altogether. Neither is the answer.

A Warwick University study found anxiety shot up 40% after receiving a negative comment, particularly in younger people. We've felt it: Lyndsay once spent an hour on a fifty word Facebook post (dyslexia and spelling anxiety in full force), only for someone to claim she'd spelt "success" wrong. She hadn't. Even when you're completely right, some numpty on the internet will call you out, so accept it now: criticism is the price of creating, and the bigger you get, the more you'll attract.

Frankfurt University research found that when criticism gets personal, nitpicky or self-promotional, it backfires on the critic and rallies people to your side. Case in point: Martin posted "stop relying on creativity, consistency wins", a creative agency owner tore into him and tried soliciting clients in the comments, Martin's audience turned on him, and he deleted the whole thing. Strong opinions split the room, and that's exactly what gets engagement; plant your flag.

You can't go far wrong posting from genuine experience, because you've got the evidence to back it up; the trouble starts when you stray into topics where you've got opinions but not expertise. And if you're early in your journey, don't position yourself as the expert waiting to be shot down by real ones: be the student. "Follow along as I navigate this" attracts connection instead of correction, and it's often more compelling content anyway. Post from a place of genuine belief, not engagement farming; Lyndsay learned the hard way that when critics called out her edgy engagement-bait posts, it stung precisely because they were right.

Pat Flynn, quite possibly the loveliest man in internet marketing, had a troll who repeatedly accused him of faking his income reports. Pat got on a call, shared his screen and proved everything was legit... and the guy was back posting negative comments the next day. You get criticised for speaking up and criticised for staying silent, so build a community around you who'll tell you honestly when a critic has a point and when to ignore the idiots. And when someone genuinely gets to a creator so badly they quit (like Gary Stevenson stepping back from YouTube), that's a loss for everyone, whichever side of the argument you're on.

If you put out enough content, mistakes are inevitable, and people will gleefully share yours. The answer is simple: hold your hands up, say "yep, I got that one wrong", and tell people what you'll do differently. No drama, no dodging. Owning a mistake reads as humanity, not weakness, and audiences forgive humans; what they don't forgive is pretending it never happened.

Everyone's nodding along before you've even made your point: everybody tells you to post on LinkedIn every day, but nobody tells you how to do it without going insane. It works because your audience is drowning in "why" content and starving for the "how", and this hook positions you as the one person with the actual system.

Check out Vidonary.com to Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

Welcome to episode 8 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

We started back in 2012 the heavy-duty way: freelancing, face-to-face meetings, hiring videographers, travelling to shoots, the whole shebang. We hit seven figures and don't regret a second of it, but the overheads are high, and it's certainly not stress-free. If we were advising a 24-year-old leaving their corporate job today, we'd point them down a completely different path: the one-person, AI-powered agency with tiny overheads and healthy margins.

Fewer and fewer people want highly polished, cinematic videos; they want good content, even if it's a grainy webcam or an iPhone walking down the street. We've worked with clients for years who we've never met face to face: we load up their scripts, they record on their phone, we edit and post. One of our clients is literally recording content on his boat right now. Thirty minutes of his time, sorted.

Here's the structure for a one-person video agency: you write the hooks and scripts, load them into the client's account with a teleprompter, they record in their own space without the pressure of a camera crew in their face, then you edit, caption and publish. Niche down (vets, law firms, whatever industry you know) and you can charge even more because you already speak their language. And yes, people will pay: 90% of local businesses aren't posting consistently, and the one that does gets all the leads.

Forget SaaS-style volume businesses that need thousands of customers; five clients paying two thousand a month is ten grand of predictable, recurring monthly revenue, with maybe two thousand in overheads. Same service every month, paid upfront, forecastable twelve months ahead. It's not the sexiest way to start a business, but it's the simplest, and business is hard enough without making it complex.

Unpopular advice, but it works: when we built websites, we'd mock up a free homepage, and that took three hours on a good day. A free edited video takes under thirty minutes, and who's turning down a free video? Knock on doors, send emails, offer a video in exchange for a testimonial, and once they see it, they'll want content tomorrow, the day after and the day after that. You only need five people; you'll get there quicker than you think, then raise your prices.

Full service agencies like ours charge five to twenty thousand a month, and DIY software is thirty to a hundred and fifty dollars, but there's a huge underserved middle: businesses with fifteen hundred to three thousand a month to spend. That's exactly who a solo agency can serve, and it's why we built the agency licence into Vidinary: manage client accounts from one login, load their scripts, and the only thing your client ever has to do is hit record on their phone.

An opinion opener that works brilliantly with a harsh truth on the end: I wish this weren't true, but people can't always afford your prices. I wish this weren't true, but your expertise alone isn't going to make you sales. It works because you're positioning yourself as the honest friend delivering something your audience genuinely needs to hear.

Check out Vidonary.com to Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

Here's episode 7 (no number in the transcript again, so give me a shout if I'm off):

Welcome to episode 7 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

A new study shows 3.5 million new businesses were formed in the US in the first half of this year alone, up 14% year on year, driven by AI lowering the barrier to entry and a rough job market pushing people into entrepreneurship. Add to that the amount of video being consumed nearly doubling in twelve months, and standing out over the next two to five years isn't optional; it's the difference between success and being left by the wayside, even if you've got the better product.

One of the best ways to stand out isn't being controversial or extroverted; it's explaining your expertise as simply as possible. Instead of banging on about "frictionless customer onboarding", point at the Domino's pizza tracker: you know when it's being made, when it's in the oven, when it's out for delivery. Or take copywriter Harry Dry's gold example: don't say "gold is up 2.4%", show a picture of Warren Buffett and say "this guy just invested millions in it."

We review fifty to sixty pieces of content a week inside Vidinary, and the most common feedback is the same: you're opening with niche-specific detail that only people with your knowledge care about. Your complex understanding creates complex content. Open broad and familiar like a documentary would (a face everyone knows, a brand everyone recognises), then take people into the niche stuff. And good news for introverts: this is thinking work, not performing work, which is exactly why video suits quieter people who care about communicating clearly.

Everyone defaults to being the teacher, but that's the most crowded lane there is. Documenting your journey as the learner ("I've run a seven figure agency, now follow along as I build a SaaS") builds connection without diminishing your expertise, and vulnerability opens doors that ego keeps shut. Or be the curator: share the latest news with your take on what it actually means for your audience. It's exactly what we do on this show, and you can graduate to teacher once you've built the audience.

Over half the content in some TikTok categories is now AI-generated, so being the real, imperfect, slightly awkward you is becoming the rarest thing online. Use AI for scripts, hooks, captions and editing (that's speeding up the process, not replacing yourself), but always be the one on camera. And watch for the AI tells in your captions: "throat clearing" sentences, pointless rhetorical questions and words like "skyrocket". It's like Martin's parents' record company surviving digitisation: people came back for the crackle of vinyl, and they'll crave the real you too.

A Trojan horse of a hook: it's really just "here's my number one tip", but front loaded with empathy. There's nothing more draining than posting every day and getting no likes, shares or enquiries... and then you deliver the strategy that fixes it. The more specific you can be about the problem and the feeling it creates, the more your audience will think you've read their mind.

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Welcome to episode 6 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

1. The man who told Elon Musk "no"

We kicked off with the brilliant story of the guy who owned x.com since the late nineties, sold it for around ten thousand to a chap called Elon Musk, then flatly refused a two thousand pound profit to help someone buy it back. One word: no. He held onto that moment for decades, right up until Twitter became X.

2. X is quietly becoming a video platform

Here's the stat that stopped us in our tracks: videos already make up close to half of all impressions on X. For a platform everyone still thinks of as 140 characters of text, that's wild, and X's head of product Nikita has just announced a brand new video editor and recorder in the iOS app with captions, green screen and more on the way. Some are calling it the TikTokification of X, but really the platform is just responding to what people actually watch.

3. The biggest arbitrage opportunity of your career

Nikita's words, not ours: if you're an original creator who doesn't recycle other people's content, X is wide open right now. They're paying creators more than ever (while TikTok payouts have plummeted from around two thousand for ten million views to under a thousand), Grok is detecting stolen content at three times the previous rate, and over a million dollars in creator payouts have been redirected to original creators. People are likening it to LinkedIn in its 2022 heyday.

4. Less competition can beat the "right" platform

One of our clients' tweets just pulled in six hundred plus link clicks to a webinar page, and we hadn't even been thinking of X as a serious channel. Yes, the platform leans tech, business, AI, crypto, politics and economics, but the handbag seller doing brilliantly on LinkedIn proves the point: being where your audience is and your competitors aren't is a powerful combination. Wallets for tech entrepreneurs? Get yourself on X.

5. The three A's apply here too, and links don't kill reach anymore

Whatever the platform, you still need attention content (volume), authority content (frameworks and systems, like Cody Sanchez's landscape videos, which she's found perform brilliantly on X) and action content. And the pleasant surprise: links in posts no longer seem to derail performance on X. Follow people like Nikita, because the platforms will literally tell you what they want; deliver it and you'll be rewarded.

6. Platform editors are fine, but consistency beats creativity

X building its own video editor follows Instagram and TikTok in trying to lock you into their tools, but recording one video whenever inspiration strikes is not a content strategy. Video success is built on consistency, not creativity: a predictable publishing schedule, planned campaigns and all your videos housed in one place so you can repurpose them, which is exactly why we built Vidinary the way we did.

Hook of the day: "Let me introduce you to the concept of..."

Perfect for that middle A, authority. Let me introduce you to the concept of the Content Fortress, or the three A's, or whatever your named framework is. It works because it signals you know your subject so well that you've packaged it into your own methodology, and everybody wants to be let in on a named concept.

Check out Vidonary.com to Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

Welcome to episode 5 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

A Forbes article revealed that celebrities on press tours are finding YouTube channels get them far more views than the late night TV circuit, with Ryan Reynolds promoting his film on Hot Ones being a prime example. And why wouldn't they? Nobody wants another polished, pre-vetted interview when they could watch a Hollywood star trying to answer questions with tears streaming down their face from spicy chicken wings.

Amelia Dimoldenberg started Chicken Shop Date by simply asking a chicken shop owner if she could film in there, and now she's interviewing Jennifer Lawrence over chicken nuggets. It's the juxtaposition of glamorous celebrities in your bog-standard high street chicken shop with sticky floors that makes them relatable, and that's exactly what audiences are craving over legacy media.

After twenty years presenting mainstream TV, Holly Willoughby has launched her own YouTube lifestyle channel (currently sitting at six thousand followers), and the business case is obvious: on ITV she owned nothing and saw none of the ad money, but on YouTube she owns the audience, the sponsorships and the IP. That's the lesson for entrepreneurs: carve out your own corner of the internet, because nobody can take that off you.

It's like Gary Vaynerchuk warning business owners to buy Facebook ads before big companies priced everyone out: celebrities and corporations are moving onto YouTube, and it's only going to get more saturated. Being on YouTube now is the modern equivalent of having a shop on the high street versus being in the middle of nowhere. It's not a marketing task anymore; it's the difference between being seen and being invisible.

Forget millions of followers: with roughly eight thousand people on our email list and twelve thousand LinkedIn followers between us, we never have to chase sales for an agency that only needs five or six clients. A small, loyal audience of the right people who trust you will support your business for years. It's not about becoming famous; it's about making your mark.

Lyndsay posted something this morning that got zero likes, and that's fine: it's information, not failure. Test constantly, examine why things worked or didn't, improve one percent each time like Mr Beast, and consider posting more often on platforms that allow it to fast track your learning. TBPN had barely any viewers when they started their daily three-hour live show; they just sold to OpenAI for a hundred million. It takes time either way, so you might as well start.

A belief changer that works for any niche: no one cares about super polished videos anymore, no one cares about appearing on TV shows anymore, here's what they're doing instead. It grabs attention because it challenges something your audience assumes is still true, then immediately opens the loop on what's replaced it.

Check out Vidonary.com to Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

Welcome to episode 4 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

It's so easy to get seduced by views and engagement, but ultimately sales are what we're all here for, and video absolutely delivers them. The research backs it up: 85% of consumers say videos help them make a buying decision, and 82% of marketers say social media video gives them a positive ROI.

You can only track what people click, but real buyer journeys are far messier: someone watches your YouTube video, then buys through an email link days later, or watches Alex Hormozi and goes straight to Amazon to type in his book title. The two big mistakes are ditching video because "you can't attribute anything to it" or treating it as a soft awareness-only channel. Even the trackable stuff alone shows a huge ROI; the untrackable stuff is a bonus on top.

When we ran our web design agency, high-end clients paying tens of thousands didn't choose us because our websites were wildly different from the competition's. They chose us because they liked us. Unless you offer something literally nobody else can, you are the differentiator, and video is how people decide "I could actually imagine working with them."

Short, snappy 30 to 60 second videos posted consistently are your giant fishing net (Lyndsay's metaphor, don't judge). Nobody hands over ten grand off the back of one Reel; it compounds day in, day out until people label you as "the person who helps with X". And crucially, don't just teach: anyone can get teaching from ChatGPT now, so it's your opinion, your take and mindset-shifting ideas that earn the follow.

This is where your frameworks, systems and intellectual property come in: Loom-style videos walking through your methodology with diagrams (who doesn't love a good diagram?), like our Content Fortress or Daniel Priestley's two-person scout team. We've generated hundreds of thousands of pounds off the back of sales calls where we simply share a diagram of our system. It's work to package your process up, which is exactly why most people don't do it.

The direct pitch: a personalised video sent straight to a prospect ("Hi Jenny, I spotted a few things on your LinkedIn you could improve...") or a video sales letter on your sales page. We landed our biggest ever client with a single personalised video, but here's the catch: it only worked because when he went to check us out, the attention and authority content was there to back it up. You need all three A's, and once you find your weekly cadence across them, leads and sales become genuinely predictable.

A massive open loop that instantly signals an opinion is coming, and it feels urgent, like you've just grabbed your phone because you had to say something. It works in any niche: I can't be the only one that's noticed the latest iPhone update, or that's noticed this trend in your industry. Nobody can resist finding out whether they've noticed it too.

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No problem at all. I've used episode 2 as you've written it, and I'll bump the number up each time you give me a new transcript (just note that if we do this in a fresh chat, a quick reminder of the episode number helps). Here's the full version:

Welcome to episode 2 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

For the first time ever, more media companies have been bought this year than software companies, and more of them are being snapped up by non-media companies than ever before. And before you switch off at "media company", we're not talking Sky or Netflix; these are small business owners who've built niche content platforms with loyal audiences, and they're selling for millions.

Pat Walls spent years interviewing founders honestly (revenue numbers, mistakes, the lot) and built around 800,000 fiercely loyal YouTube subscribers. When HubSpot bought his company, their explanation mentioned nothing about profits or products; in their own words, they were buying trust. That's what a faceless corporation can't create for itself.

OpenAI buying TBPN, a three-hour daily live podcast with a couple of hundred viewers on a good day, makes zero sense as a sponsorship play. What they're actually doing is buying up the territory so competitors like Perplexity can never advertise there, the same reason SEMrush bought Brian Dean's Backlinko (much to Ahrefs' very public bitterness about their links "starting to get removed").

This fear stops people building a personal brand, or makes them pull back way too early. But Martin's Money sold for around seventy million with the founder's face plastered everywhere, and nobody stopped buying Virgin Records because Richard Branson was front and centre. Let your personal brand champion and fuel the business until it's actually sellable, then pull back if you need to.

Showing up live at the same time every day, spending twenty hours a month personally in your community, giving real feedback: it's difficult, it doesn't scale, and that's exactly the point. In a world of AI content, the rare, human, effortful stuff is what makes customers stay and what makes competitors think twice. People might buy the hype, but they stay for the community.

Simple, endlessly swappable (easiest, simplest, smartest) and it works in basically any niche: the easiest way to start a podcast, to grow your community, to get consistent with video. It's so effective because most audiences feel overwhelmed, and this hook instantly signals there's an easy way in. Or, as the ad that inspired it put it: here's the easiest way to get a hundred million for your content business... get two billionaires to fight over it.

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Companies mentioned in this episode:

• HubSpot
• Starter Story
• OpenAI
• TBPN
• The Hustle
• Backlinko
• SEM Rush
• Ahrefs

Welcome to episode 2 of the Bingeability Show with Martin Huntbach & Lyndsay Cambridge from Vidonary.com - Plan, record, edit and publish videos for social media and YouTube.

If you want to get consistent with your video content, sign up to Vidonary today. Use it to plan, record, edit and publish your videos. Use the desktop and mobile app to speed up your content creation.

In a rare interview with The Times, LinkedIn CEO Dan Shapiro revealed his formula for success on the platform: insight plus personality. Insight means someone has to actually learn something, and personality means bringing your tone of voice and the essence of who you are, but he draws a firm line between personality and personal, and says keep it professional.

This is where we respectfully disagree with the CEO. From Stephen Bartlett's life updates blowing up compared to his business content, to our own candid posts about health issues (and even a gardener's AI mock-up of our garden becoming one of our most popular posts ever), the evidence is clear: personal content performs brilliantly on LinkedIn, especially as the line between work and life keeps blurring for entrepreneurs.

The reason personal gets a bad name is people doing it wrong: shoehorning a story about Sunday's football into a weird lesson about boardroom communication. Instead, share genuine value or a story with no forced link, then simply add a PS at the bottom: "FYI, I share insights like this in my newsletter every week, link below." That one strategy, the Everyday CTA, brings our clients hundreds of leads every single week.

Counterintuitively, longer videos (up to LinkedIn's fifteen minute limit) work brilliantly because they sit in the main feed where people can actually see your link, whereas short vertical videos get shoved into the swipe-happy Shorts feed. Barely anyone is posting YouTube-style talking head videos natively on LinkedIn, and it's one of the few ways to reach corporate audiences who can't exactly scroll YouTube at their desk.

Shapiro confirmed LinkedIn now uses AI classifiers to detect generic AI content and limit its reach, which is a bit rich given they spent years begging you to rewrite every post and comment with AI. Either way, the takeaway is the same: your own stories, anecdotes and IP are the only way to stand out, so ask yourself "could someone else have written this?" and if the answer is yes, make it more you.

This one works because it leads with emotion and opinion, and people can't help but wonder what's wound you up today. It's endlessly reusable too: it bothers me that more people don't know how to get leads from LinkedIn, how to use this iPhone setting, how to use this software. (And yes, the spicier "it pisses me off" version works too. We tested it this morning and LinkedIn didn't burn down.)

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