Speaker 1: And that is what I will tell you. As a
Speaker 1: creator myself on the platform has been the single most
Speaker 1: helpful thing for me to help my posts find engagement.
Speaker 2: That was Jesse Hemple, Senior editor at Large at LinkedIn
Speaker 2: and host of the award winning podcast Hello Monday. So
Speaker 2: if anyone knows what actually moves the needle on LinkedIn,
Speaker 2: it is Jesse. When it comes to LinkedIn, I wonder
Speaker 2: if you can relate to this experience. You post something
Speaker 2: that you're really proud of and spent quite a while writing,
Speaker 2: watch it get all of five likes and one comment,
Speaker 2: which was from your coworker who you specifically asked if
Speaker 2: they could comment to help with reach, and then you wonder,
Speaker 2: what on earth am I doing wrong? Jesse and I
Speaker 2: get into all of it. How AI is reshaping what
Speaker 2: it means to even have a voice, whether that be
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn, in your writing and in your career. We
Speaker 2: talk about why your LinkedIn profile is doing more heavy
Speaker 2: lifting than any post you will ever write, and the
Speaker 2: best way to stand out on LinkedIn. In twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
Speaker 2: and strategies for optimizing your day I'm your host, doctor
Speaker 2: Amantha imber.
Speaker 3: Jesse.
Speaker 2: You are a senior editor at large at LinkedIn. What
Speaker 2: does that mean that you actually do all day?
Speaker 1: I think that's such a great question. Even as you
Speaker 1: said it, I thought, wow, that sounds important. I wonder
Speaker 1: what that person does. And thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me on your show. I am a longtime media
Speaker 1: person and my role here at LinkedIn is to help
Speaker 1: shape every facet of how LinkedIn's platform can bring trusted
Speaker 1: information to its members. It's essentially to extend everything that
Speaker 1: I learned in media during my twenty five years as
Speaker 1: we're working as a tech journalist before I came here. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the big answer, But the actual practical what do
Speaker 1: I do every day? I mean, like after I've had
Speaker 1: my cup of coffee and said hello to the people
Speaker 1: I work with. In part, I am recording a lot
Speaker 1: of our outward facing shows. So that is our career podcast,
Speaker 1: Hello Monday. That is our incredible material that we are
Speaker 1: making available to premium members, our workshops, our shows. We
Speaker 1: have a great new show called in the Room Live
Speaker 1: for premium members. And that is any writing that we do,
Speaker 1: any audio bits that we do, and we're always experimenting here. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you think of three buckets, that's one bucket.
Speaker 1: The second bucket is to think critically about how we
Speaker 1: can be supporting creators out there. You know, this is
Speaker 1: a moment when every professional can grow by thinking of
Speaker 1: themselves as a creator. And some of those creators, they
Speaker 1: are big names. They're folks like Mel Robbins, Amantha Imber,
Speaker 1: people who you just hope to emulate as you develop
Speaker 1: your strategy. That's part of what I'm talking about, but
Speaker 1: not at all everyone that I'm talking about. It's my
Speaker 1: conviction that everybody who is a working professional in today's
Speaker 1: landscape has a lot to benefit by thinking of themselves
Speaker 1: as a creator in the social media ecosystem. So that's
Speaker 1: the second bucket. And then the third bucket, Amantha, we
Speaker 1: have this incredible team of people who sit on our
Speaker 1: content team here at LinkedIn. We actually have hundreds of
Speaker 1: people who are paying close attention to how news moves
Speaker 1: on our platform. And I get to take a role
Speaker 1: in shaping that, in working with the young people coming
Speaker 1: up in our system, in transferring my values around what
Speaker 1: good editorial work looks like to that group of people
Speaker 1: coming up.
Speaker 2: That's great like I imagine that's very much of your
Speaker 2: world involves consuming content from different sources, and obviously a
Speaker 2: lot from LinkedIn, but I imagine a lot from all
Speaker 2: over the place. I would love to know where are
Speaker 2: your go to sources for keeping up with the world
Speaker 2: of work, which is so big.
Speaker 1: I love that you ask that. I mean, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that my go to source. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this because I work for LinkedIn but is LinkedIn and
Speaker 1: is not in fact the voices of people like me,
Speaker 1: but that everyday people who are writing about.
Speaker 3: Their experiences in the job market.
Speaker 1: And I will also tell you that I try really
Speaker 1: hard to take in information from everywhere. I read the
Speaker 1: New York Times, but I also make sure that I'm
Speaker 1: reading the Financial Times, a Washington Post, a number of newspapers,
Speaker 1: so traditional newspapers. I also pay attention to so many
Speaker 1: creators who are actually filtering the news for me. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you my favorite, and I have read him
Speaker 1: for a long time. There's a guy named and Dave
Speaker 1: Pell who pens a daily newsletter called Next Draft. And
Speaker 1: this newsletter has been coming out since Substack was a
Speaker 1: dream in somebody's mind. And he summarizes every day. He
Speaker 1: calls himself the managing editor of the Internet, and he
Speaker 1: is also super funny, and he summarizes every day the
Speaker 1: most important stories and gives highlights of them and tells
Speaker 1: you where to go deeper. It's actually my front door
Speaker 1: every morning.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I love that too.
Speaker 2: I am gonna hunt down that substack next draft. So
Speaker 2: I'm always curious for people that are creating content for Litty,
Speaker 2: You're obviously consuming a lot of content and you're creating
Speaker 2: a lot of content. How has AI influenced things for you? Like,
Speaker 2: I'm curious, where do you absolutely lean into AI and
Speaker 2: where are your hardlines saying no, no, this is a
Speaker 2: human job.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that I
Speaker 1: am a tech optimist at my core. I believe firmly
Speaker 1: that AI offers the most opportunity that we have for
Speaker 1: solving some of our largest problems in the world. Right
Speaker 1: But this moment that we're in that is about developing.
Speaker 1: It is a moment where there's a lot of unknown
Speaker 1: and a lot of uncertainty. And what that has meant
Speaker 1: for me and my practice is that I'm early to
Speaker 1: rush at everything.
Speaker 3: And then about two.
Speaker 1: Weeks after I try it, I usually figure out can't
Speaker 1: use AI for that that's not there or that's working
Speaker 1: really well, I'm going to lean in there. So one
Speaker 1: great example is that, like in the early days, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, well, maybe this AI could I could
Speaker 1: train AI on every episode of Hello Monday I've ever published,
Speaker 1: and AI could like write the openings of the.
Speaker 3: Episodes for me. That's a terrible idea, but I didn't
Speaker 3: know it till I tried it.
Speaker 1: Right, it turns out that in my experience, AI is
Speaker 1: not a great writer, and even for me, and only
Speaker 1: for me, perhaps not a great writer of first drafts.
Speaker 1: That really AI's opportunity for me, let's start with writing
Speaker 1: is to push my thinking and it is always a
Speaker 1: useful exercise, even though it is a little harder. It's
Speaker 1: always a useful exercise for me to stare at an
Speaker 1: empty page, turn off all of my notifications, and be
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for an hour and get a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: down that I am not proud of, and then give
Speaker 1: it to the AI and say what am I missing here?
Speaker 1: Or how might Amantha think about this that is different
Speaker 1: than the way that I'm thinking about this. So that
Speaker 1: is one way that I use it in my writing.
Speaker 1: But that's really only the beginning of what I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about when I think about how that I use these
Speaker 1: tools in my workflow. We also increasingly can use these
Speaker 1: tools to edit parts of our video podcast. So Hello
Speaker 1: Monday exists in video form and we publish it on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn and on YouTube, and I know that most of
Speaker 1: the folks who listen to our show really have an
Speaker 1: audio relationship with it, but I'm also very in interested
Speaker 1: in what the video can be over time. We were
Speaker 1: able to actually bring down the editing process on that
Speaker 1: thirty minute episode from a full day of a human
Speaker 1: editor's time to closer to an hour of that time
Speaker 1: through using an AI program to do a first.
Speaker 3: Pass, WHICHI program is this Jesse.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say the name of it, only
Speaker 1: because I don't want to advertise for this particular software,
Speaker 1: and there are now many softwares who will do this.
Speaker 1: The bigger point here is that I think that this
Speaker 1: is a particularly great use of the software because I
Speaker 1: am having the conversation, I know what I want the
Speaker 1: conversation to say, and because the video product it isn't
Speaker 1: the first product of import for us. It's not where
Speaker 1: we're trying to stand out or make a difference. It's
Speaker 1: simply something we want to have in our portfolio. It's
Speaker 1: truly a gift of automation, and that to me is
Speaker 1: like AI for the most part, where it helps me
Speaker 1: right now is automating thing. It is not doing any
Speaker 1: thinking for me. And in fact, when I begin to
Speaker 1: rely on it in any facet of my professional life
Speaker 1: to push the thinking, to do the thinking, I always
Speaker 1: fall down. Now, we can have this conversation again in
Speaker 1: six months and I will give you probably an entirely
Speaker 1: different answer. But that is okay with me, because this
Speaker 1: is the moment when we are supposed to be learning,
Speaker 1: and the only way that we can learn is actually
Speaker 1: to deploy it in our own practice.
Speaker 3: I mean, how have.
Speaker 1: You navigated the arrival of AI as a creative as
Speaker 1: somebody making a show?
Speaker 3: Where do you deploy the tool and where do you
Speaker 3: back off the tool?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something I think about, gosh, like every day,
Speaker 2: I would say. So. I've got a couple of businesses
Speaker 2: and one of them is an AI training company, and
Speaker 2: every Monday, in How I Work feed, we release an
Speaker 2: episode that is just about Hey, I tips and how
Speaker 2: we using it at work and how to get more
Speaker 2: out of it. So I think about it a lot.
Speaker 2: I experiment a lot.
Speaker 3: As a writer.
Speaker 2: I always feel that as a human I'm not using
Speaker 2: AI to, as you said, do that first draft. And
Speaker 2: I mean that metaphorically, like I've just written my fifth
Speaker 2: book and gearing up for the launch of that, and
Speaker 2: I remember, like in the sort of early ideation parts
Speaker 2: of the book where I was just really struggling with
Speaker 2: the structure and really struggling with how are these ideas
Speaker 2: that I've got in my head going to fit together?
Speaker 2: I went on so many walks with my AI, and
Speaker 2: I tried different prompts with the AI, like sometimes I
Speaker 2: would get it to interview me and not give me
Speaker 2: any ideas, like not contribute to the idea generation process.
Speaker 2: Other times I would ideate with it and then I
Speaker 2: compare results, and I still feel, like, you know, in
Speaker 2: that early stage of creating content, the things that are
Speaker 2: coming from my brain are the things that I really
Speaker 2: need to lock in on. I then have different workflows
Speaker 2: where it comes to editing, like I was working on
Speaker 2: Publicist at the moment at Penguin, is pitching to different
Speaker 2: media outlets and do you want an extract of the book,
Speaker 2: and you know, a pretty big media outlet said, I'd
Speaker 2: love a month to write something, but it needs to
Speaker 2: be original but still around the theme of the book.
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, that's interesting. What an interesting challenge
Speaker 2: to try me as a human writing that versus where
Speaker 2: do I get AI to write that? And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: as a human, I need to write the first draft.
Speaker 2: And then I played around with Okay, I'll prompt AI
Speaker 2: to be an editor of this publication and give me
Speaker 2: a critique on the draft. And some of that was good,
Speaker 2: some of that was not. Something I find I'm always
Speaker 2: doing now with final drafts. Is it's a skill that
Speaker 2: I've got in claud that's like an anti AI skill
Speaker 2: where it goes through my writing and it says, this
Speaker 2: is what sounds like it's written by AI, because, as
Speaker 2: I'm sure you would appreciate as a writer, some of
Speaker 2: the things that we naturally do are now baked into
Speaker 2: AI and their AI tells, which is so far when
Speaker 2: it's that's how I write. Oh man, I used to
Speaker 2: use so many M dashes and now like I'm you know,
Speaker 2: relying more on brackets.
Speaker 1: I just took the phrase here's the thing out of
Speaker 1: an essay that I was writing right before we were
Speaker 1: on this call, because I thought, well, I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to use that. Cloud took that from me.
Speaker 2: You can't use that. I know, I know. It's so sad.
Speaker 2: I used to say that as well corrective antithesis. I've
Speaker 2: heard it called a few things like it's not this,
Speaker 2: it's that, referred to as several things. I use that
Speaker 2: a lot in my writing, and it's funny.
Speaker 3: I was aware of that.
Speaker 2: I was recently recording the audiobook of the Energy Game,
Speaker 2: and whenever I came across that, I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: that sounds like.
Speaker 3: Hey, I write that, but I actually wrote that.
Speaker 2: And so I find that having that skill can help
Speaker 2: me get rid of the things that I would naturally
Speaker 2: use as a human writer, so that people don't read
Speaker 2: my work and go, ah, it looks like AI just
Speaker 2: wrote that when I didn't write that. And that's the
Speaker 2: worst when you was a human writer and people think
Speaker 2: AI wrote it because you trually use some of those
Speaker 2: AI tells, so that I find frustrating.
Speaker 1: I think it is amazing that you have written a
Speaker 1: book against the backdrop of this right now. And I
Speaker 1: say that because the writer in me is struggling right now.
Speaker 1: It's struggling both with how do I identify my voice and
Speaker 1: find a thing to say that it's mine in this world,
Speaker 1: and also who's around to read it. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be read by a bunch of agents. I want
Speaker 1: to use my writing to be a tool to be
Speaker 1: in conversation with people. You know, I wrote a book
Speaker 1: that came out in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: It was a personal book, it was a memoir. It
Speaker 1: was very personal project. But that book became a tool
Speaker 1: for being in deep conversation around things I cared about,
Speaker 1: and it felt like a method of connection. And there's
Speaker 1: a piece of me that doesn't trust that a book
Speaker 1: is that right now, even as I sit here in
Speaker 1: my role and I speak to people about their books,
Speaker 1: and it's an unsettled piece, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: where will go. But right now it is driving me
Speaker 1: to want to read a ton and not rate a lot.
Speaker 1: And I help that pass this because I'm a rado.
Speaker 2: That's what I am Coming up next, Jesse gets into
Speaker 2: who she thinks is producing some of the best content
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn right now, including one creator who's built an
Speaker 2: entire offline and online community through her posting strategy. If
Speaker 2: you're looking for more tips to improve the way you
Speaker 2: work can live. I write a short weekly newsletter that
Speaker 2: contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You
Speaker 2: can sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's
Speaker 2: Amantha dot com. I want to talk about LinkedIn, Jesse,
Speaker 2: and I want to talk about it from a user's perspective,
Speaker 2: because you know, the platform has obviously changed so much
Speaker 2: with people writing using AI and not putting there thoughts
Speaker 2: onto the platform, and this drives me a little bit
Speaker 2: mad because my feed, you know, and I'm sure you
Speaker 2: would hear this every day, my feed looks really different
Speaker 2: to how it did even a year ago, and it
Speaker 2: actually now takes me a bit of work to curate
Speaker 2: my feed. I even did a post yesterday just asking
Speaker 2: some of the people that I really love their writing,
Speaker 2: who are they reading, because presumably people that I love reading,
Speaker 2: people that I would also love And what does it
Speaker 2: take to grow and engage people on LinkedIn these days?
Speaker 2: Because you know, I feel like stuff that I would
Speaker 2: write a year ago and it would get really high
Speaker 2: engagement is now just getting moderate engagement and then I
Speaker 2: get really confused and then despondent.
Speaker 1: You are not the only person who has said that, right,
Speaker 1: And I also think that as the condition of modern
Speaker 1: social media more than just a challenge of the LinkedIn platform?
Speaker 3: What do I rate?
Speaker 1: That gats engagement? And then I heard in that and
Speaker 1: you tell me if I'm wrong. I also heard in that. Gosh,
Speaker 1: everything's starting to sound the same, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: M wrote it all these posts. Those conditions are conditions
Speaker 1: that I think frame the social ecosystem right now and
Speaker 1: that we are working through. Here's something I believe about content, right.
Speaker 1: We want to know, Amantha, that you did not use
Speaker 1: your LLM to give me your screed on what makes
Speaker 1: a good leader, right Like I'm talking to you here.
Speaker 1: If I get off of this conversation and I jump
Speaker 1: onto LinkedIn and I read a post from you and
Speaker 1: it sounds like an LLM wrote it, I'm gonna really
Speaker 1: have like distaste in my mouth. And that leaves me
Speaker 1: to believe that we are in this interim period when
Speaker 1: it comes to how people are using llms to write
Speaker 1: the content on their post, that we've all rushed to
Speaker 1: do it because we think that we can but we
Speaker 1: are all in the process of discovering.
Speaker 3: That UHA does not feel good to read, and.
Speaker 1: Oh, everybody's brusted, everybody's using it, and that this is
Speaker 1: like a bump in the road that we're going to
Speaker 1: work through on our way to somebody else. Now, my
Speaker 1: bet is on the human connection piece of it. And
Speaker 1: the wonderful thing about LinkedIn as a platform, and the
Speaker 1: thing that has kept me here at LinkedIn for eight
Speaker 1: years working in media, is that we care a lot
Speaker 1: about trust and safety, which means that even if I've
Speaker 1: never met you, I can pretty much trust that you
Speaker 1: are a real person and that you have represented yourself
Speaker 1: according to who you might represent yourself in real life
Speaker 1: ass And this allows for a kind of healthy ecosystem
Speaker 1: around public discourse that does not exist most other places
Speaker 1: in the web right now. And if there is a
Speaker 1: benefit to the fact that LLM has allowed a broader
Speaker 1: group of people to sort of feel empowered to post
Speaker 1: their ideas or feel like they have the skills to
Speaker 1: write those ideas, it is just that that it has
Speaker 1: sort of brought down the bar for access for a
Speaker 1: lot of folks and actually more likely to run into
Speaker 1: more people that you know in real life people I
Speaker 1: know from my kids' school of people I know from
Speaker 1: the last job writing on LinkedIn and being in conversation
Speaker 1: in LinkedIn, and that's not good. I believe the challenging
Speaker 1: pieces like the LLLM thing and how we're all beginning
Speaker 1: to feel and see that these posts, some of these
Speaker 1: posts don't feel like us. But we're smart people, and
Speaker 1: so we're going to figure out how to move past that. Okay,
Speaker 1: your second question though, and that's what I want to
Speaker 1: take on. And at any point of Mantha, you can
Speaker 1: jump in and be like Jess, you are talking too much.
Speaker 3: Let me end here. But how the heck does one
Speaker 3: do this? What is success on LinkedIn? Right?
Speaker 1: And that is a bigger question even than why did
Speaker 1: I have engagement last year and why don't I have
Speaker 1: it this year? What is success at LinkedIn? And I
Speaker 1: think that success is being in real conversations that matter
Speaker 1: with people who have the potential to elevate the issues
Speaker 1: of concern for you in your career. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of little hacks that I always offer to people
Speaker 1: who are trying to just get started. Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: you need to think of your LinkedIn profile as the
Speaker 1: most important piece of what it means to be well
Speaker 1: engaged on LinkedIn, because when somebody goes looking for you,
Speaker 1: they're going to search for you. I was going to
Speaker 1: say they're going to Google you, but these days maybe
Speaker 1: they'll go to chat ebt. Who knows where they will
Speaker 1: go to find you. But the first thing they're going
Speaker 1: to do is drop your name in some sort of
Speaker 1: search box. And one of the first things that is
Speaker 1: going to come up is your LinkedIn profile. And you
Speaker 1: would be surprised how many people just don't even bother
Speaker 1: to do the basic hygienics here. How do you want
Speaker 1: people to understand you when they find you? And that
Speaker 1: is a visual question, like are you using that little
Speaker 1: headline bar that we give you above your profile photo well,
Speaker 1: and it's also a question of the texts that you're
Speaker 1: choosing to use to describe what you're about, yoursel story narrative.
Speaker 1: And so if you just get that piece right and
Speaker 1: keep that piece updated, you're doing the single most important
Speaker 1: thing you need to do to be successful on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: Now I work for LinkedIn. I think they would probably
Speaker 1: be psyched if I told you some other things to do,
Speaker 1: And I will just tell you less is more, And
Speaker 1: this is a really important idea to hold.
Speaker 3: Whenever anybody gets started.
Speaker 1: With a new social media platform, they commit to goals
Speaker 1: they can't reach. I'm going to post every single day,
Speaker 1: and often goals that misunderstand how the mechanics of the
Speaker 1: social platform work. Here at LinkedIn, you should be aiming
Speaker 1: to post three times a week and to think of
Speaker 1: those posts like conversations, and I would say to author
Speaker 1: them yourselves, and that that is what success looks like. Now,
Speaker 1: what should your post be? It should be Should it
Speaker 1: be a newsletter? Should it be video, Should it be
Speaker 1: a poll, should it be a Well, the answer to
Speaker 1: that comes back to how comfortable you are in different media, Right,
Speaker 1: my Colleaguesiana is so good on video. She just picks
Speaker 1: up her phone and can talk to you and you
Speaker 1: are immediately engaged. Video is probably the right medium for her.
Speaker 1: I'm more comfortable writing. I love to write, and a
Speaker 1: very long meati post that is truly my voice, even
Speaker 1: without a strong image, will often engender a great engagement. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get that post up and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do how do I help this along?
Speaker 3: So you probably suspect.
Speaker 1: If you are a person who has already been trying
Speaker 1: to make use of social for a number of years.
Speaker 1: That what happens early on in the life of the
Speaker 1: post is important. That's why you're not going to post
Speaker 1: at four am on a Thursday morning, right, You're going
Speaker 1: to schedule that post for I don't know, Wednesday afternoon,
Speaker 1: because you want to arrive when people are looking, and
Speaker 1: you understand that how the first group of people respond
Speaker 1: to that post, it's gonna help that post along a
Speaker 1: little bit. This is a basic rule of social It
Speaker 1: applies to LinkedIn, It also applies to a lot of
Speaker 1: other social platforms. But here's a LinkedIn piece that will
Speaker 1: help you out a lot. We care a ton about
Speaker 1: the conversation around the post, and we reward it. And
Speaker 1: so what that means is, it's not just Amantha that
Speaker 1: you have put up an amazing post about your podcast
Speaker 1: How I Work and this great guest you just had.
Speaker 1: It's that I follow you and noticed and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, you had ner.
Speaker 3: Iye all on the show.
Speaker 1: I really loved that, and then that you jump back
Speaker 1: into conversation. So when our algorithm notices that you have
Speaker 1: jumped in and responded to my comment, yeah, Jesse, I
Speaker 1: got him. Then it says, oh, here's a hot one,
Speaker 1: here's a healthy conversation. And that is what I will
Speaker 1: tell you. As a creator myself on the platform has
Speaker 1: been the single most helpful thing for me to help
Speaker 1: my posts find engagement.
Speaker 2: I love that. I would love to know, Jesse, because
Speaker 2: you're on LinkedIn presumably for maybe several hours a day
Speaker 2: because of your job. Who are the people that you
Speaker 2: love following the most? Who, in your mind is producing
Speaker 2: really great content and great conversations on the platform?
Speaker 1: So many people. I would point you to Dory Clark.
Speaker 1: I think Dory Clark is. I wonder have you had
Speaker 1: Dory Clark on your show?
Speaker 2: I haven't, but I know exactly who she is, Yes,
Speaker 2: and I coleheartedly agree.
Speaker 1: She is phenomenal and she really understands not just how
Speaker 1: social posting works, but what it means to be a
Speaker 1: leader in conversation on the platform. And I would let's
Speaker 1: see who else do I love? Right now?
Speaker 3: I want to give you the best of the best. Uh.
Speaker 1: Aaron Helper. Aaron Helper is a solopreneur in New Jersey
Speaker 1: who has built a business helping people who are independent
Speaker 1: consultants connect with each other and grow their businesses. And
Speaker 1: she has a great posting strategy on LinkedIn, and what
Speaker 1: makes it great is that she truly stewards a community
Speaker 1: that exists offline and online, and the online expression of
Speaker 1: that community happens for the most part on the LinkedIn platform.
Speaker 1: And so each of her posts has deep conversations around
Speaker 1: the material, and the conversations in particular, move forward the
Speaker 1: set of ideas that Aaron is trying to advance, and
Speaker 1: those ideas are really related to how you succeed when
Speaker 1: you want to go it on your own. And this
Speaker 1: is particularly important, Amantha, because a lot of what I'm
Speaker 1: seeing as AI disrupts the traditional career ladder is that
Speaker 1: for mid career professionals, senior career professionals, people like myself.
Speaker 1: Whereas the answer used to be if the job that
Speaker 1: you had went away, you were well positioned to go
Speaker 1: out and find another better job, and you should be
Speaker 1: looking for a more traditional job inside a corporation or
Speaker 1: an organization with the benefits, structure and the social safety
Speaker 1: and all the rest. And I realized in North America
Speaker 1: that is particularly important in this moment. I actually think
Speaker 1: that the far smarter move is to become an independent consultant.
Speaker 1: We're living in a moment where companies are over rotating
Speaker 1: on these technologies, and so they are downsizing, and in downsizing,
Speaker 1: they are losing expertise, and in the next couple of
Speaker 1: years they are realizing, oh goodness, we actually needed that
Speaker 1: legal expertise or that marketing expertise. And so there is
Speaker 1: a ripe market for individual consultants who know how to
Speaker 1: market themselves, to productize, and to position themselves to be
Speaker 1: the answers to those problems. And in many ways, whereas
Speaker 1: it used to feel like a more vulnerable position to
Speaker 1: be in because you felt like you had to be
Speaker 1: a bit of a hustler, you had to figure out
Speaker 1: your own social safety net, because things feel more precarious
Speaker 1: in general in the workforce right now, it actually feels
Speaker 1: for many people like the safer position to.
Speaker 3: Be in, depending on your industry.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. I feel like it's a good segue
Speaker 2: into like, what are the skills that you are seeing,
Speaker 2: like in this strange world of work that we're in
Speaker 2: right now, that are the most critical skills And like
Speaker 2: it's such a cliche question, but I would love to
Speaker 2: hear your view because of where you see it.
Speaker 1: The word that we have traditionally used to describe these
Speaker 1: skills is soft skills, which is such a funny word
Speaker 1: because they are so hard and if you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, you know. But what I'm seeing is
Speaker 1: the differentiator is people who are able to navigate community
Speaker 1: in real life, who are able to be curious and
Speaker 1: smartphone conversationalists who are able to follow that curiosity to
Speaker 1: learn new things on the fly and evolve. And this
Speaker 1: is not a set of skills that people teach you.
Speaker 1: There's not a course that you can take. Rather you
Speaker 1: learn them because they're modeled for you over time if
Speaker 1: you're lucky. But whereas fifteen years ago when I was
Speaker 1: working at Wired magazine and we were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to tell people to get ahead in the economy,
Speaker 1: we send them to coding boot camps, there is no
Speaker 1: coding boot camp for soft skills, and clearly they matter
Speaker 1: more than anything else.
Speaker 3: Right now, I.
Speaker 2: Love what you said, soft skills they had to learn.
Speaker 2: I often think about the importance of good judgment now,
Speaker 2: and how do you teach good judgment? I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I feel like I am using that every day
Speaker 2: multiple times a day. You know, like we talked about
Speaker 2: AI and content, where I'll absolutely use it is thinking
Speaker 2: about headings for newsletters and kind of you know, when
Speaker 2: I'm writing a more like sales oriented piece of comms,
Speaker 2: I'm always keen to go, Okay, how can I push
Speaker 2: that hook further or how can I push that make
Speaker 2: that headline work harder? So it's actually making people open
Speaker 2: this email. And I'll work collaboratively with my AI, But
Speaker 2: I feel like I often think I'm just I'm lying
Speaker 2: on my judgment at the end of the day. I mean,
Speaker 2: the AI is throwing up ten or twenty or however
Speaker 2: many I ask for, and all I've got is my
Speaker 2: judgment in terms of how effective that use of AI
Speaker 2: is going to be. And I think that is such
Speaker 2: a hard skill to learn, you know, without all the
Speaker 2: experience and all the just the hard yards that certainly
Speaker 2: I feel like I've put in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, judgment is so much an amalgamation of taste,
Speaker 1: pattern recognition that you get through doing the reps over time,
Speaker 1: and intuition, which some combination of the three of those skills,
Speaker 1: lands and judgment. And You're right that that is the
Speaker 1: thing that we have that carries us forward, and that
Speaker 1: we have to figure out how to trust Jesse.
Speaker 2: I feel like I could just talk to you for hours,
Speaker 2: but I need to actually be respectful of time, and
Speaker 2: you're in New York and you need to go home
Speaker 2: and have dinners. So, Jesse, I just want to say
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on How I Work.
Speaker 2: I've admired your work from far. I love Hello Monday,
Speaker 2: and you know, thank you for just creating such a
Speaker 2: lively conversation, not an interview. It's just made an absolute delight.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, finally getting to actually have this
Speaker 1: time to.
Speaker 2: Connew if you. We released a bonus episode where we
Speaker 2: nerd out on podcasting because Jesse is the host of
Speaker 2: one of the top ranking shows in the US, Hello Monday,
Speaker 2: where she interviews some of the biggest in the world
Speaker 2: of work. We chat all about the art of the
Speaker 2: interview and our respective strategies for making a great one.
Speaker 2: There is a link to that episode in the show
Speaker 2: notes and in your How I Work feed. If you
Speaker 2: like today's show, make sure you get follow on your
Speaker 2: podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How
Speaker 2: I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the
Speaker 2: Warrangery people, part of the Coulan nation.