Are you reinventing your career and not sure how to handle LinkedIn or Social Media in general? In this episode we’ll share a proven game plan for your socials, with specific guidelines for people in professional transition.
Todd and Chris break down the biggest mistake midlife professionals make during ReInvention: treating social media like a polished “final reveal” instead of a tool for building momentum, community, and opportunity while you’re in the process. They talk about the mindset shift that wins right now – authenticity over perfection – especially in an era of AI-generated content and copy-paste posts.
You’ll learn how to update your profiles without panicking, how to share your ReInvention without oversharing, why the algorithms are more “interest-based” than “Aunt Sally is judging you,” and how to create a simple 30–60 day social strategy that helps you find your people (not chase influencer status).
Plus: why being a little more real – and even a little more weird – stands out in a world of generic, automated content.
If you’re in a career transition, building a business, or exploring what’s next – this will help you show up online with confidence, clarity, and momentum.
AND if this conversation resonates with you, visit ReInvention.biz to explore our guided workbook and join a community of people just like you – people designing what’s next.
**Subscribe to the ReInvention Podcast to stay plugged into fresh ideas, frameworks, and real-world tools for navigating the future of your work and life.
Episode Transcript
Todd: And this starts to get fun, right? And you start to actually see, wow, things are happening and my life is changing in a really good way. And I haven’t felt this free before. I haven’t felt this motivated before. And that’s when the light goes on. And we’re seeing this in our community, like, i’m no longer in some self-made prison.
Chris: All right, Todd, what are we talking about today? What are we gonna share with our reinventors?
Todd: All right, Chris. Well, today we’re discussing yet another topic that’s highly worthy to shine a direct light on as we’re reinventing our careers and our lives, and that’s how to use social media as things are changing or we’re in transition, or as we’re exploring new reinvented pathways and not exactly sure when or how to share things publicly.
And this is a big one because most midlife professionals who are facing reinvention don’t look at their social media in a strategic way that can actually help them big time if they would simply employ a few mindset shifts and practices, and voila. Okay. That’s why we’re doing this episode. To give you some practical advice for dealing with your profiles.
Ways to think about posting updates and even how to develop an ongoing posting strategy, that in my opinion, is a great way to cross the chasm from the structured mindset of, well, I have just one career into, I’m, a reinventor and I’m exploring many new things all the time. And man, Chris, this topic is so, so juicy and I’m excited to jump in with you because I know it’s been such a hot topic in our community.
And you, our dear listeners, are gonna get a lot of value and even some healthy creative pushes from us to accelerate your reinvention using your socials. Chris, man, what’s popping for you and where do we begin?
Chris: Yeah, so I’m gonna start with something you mentioned that may be a little unintuitive, but let’s go there.
Mindset. Mindset is really critical around this we see this with all the people we talk to in our community and reinventors that we’re interacting with. You’re Gen X, I am maybe the very tail end of Gen X, I’m like an elder, millennial, xennial, whatever that is.
We grew up in this world where we’ve talked about this on other episodes, you build quietly and then you reveal it to the world. You’re a mad scientist working away in the garage, and then you finally reveal your creation. And I think people, at least of our generation, have translated that mindset to social media where it’s like, I am presenting this polished, outward facing thing, persona that that doesn’t really represent who I am. And we all know this. We’ve seen, the people who, they’re always just traveling and everything’s perfect for them, and like you’d never see any sort of strife or anything like that. That’s not exactly what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is in the current social media landscape and with the younger generations, even in the business realm and in the personal branding realm.
There is a huge push towards authenticity, vulnerability, openness, letting people see the process as you’re going through it, letting people see you build it as you go. And that’s actually what’s really connecting with people right now and really drawing in. You see this across all the platforms, the days of the uber polished posts that are really like sexy and like almost just look like a television commercial.
They’re going the way of the dodo.
Todd: Yeah.
Chris: Just like that phrase is Todd.
Todd: Yeah, exactly. you’ve now established yourself as a younger generation than me, I have to take a little bit of a breather in my old age, my friend, but, uh, I love it. Uh, but it’s true. I never thought about that.
You are on, on a different cusp of a generation technically. But I think you’re hitting on such an important point right now. This. Is a time, especially with AI coming in, that’s creating so much content for people, you know, and for just everybody out there that has a certain kind of energy to it, what’s gonna win is authenticity and vulnerability.
Okay. And I think the mindset shift that you’re talking about is getting away from overthinking and over planning to just being present with your journey and sharing what’s going on. And this gets very tactical because I’ve had clients come to me and ask me, well, I’m reinventing and I’m now exploring different things.
Like what do I do with my profile? What do I say in my LinkedIn bio? Like Do I start changing my profiles? Isn’t that too much? They tell me. I’m like, absolutely not. This is actually a great time to be changing your profiles, be light around it, have a very in flow. I am changing, I am exploring, I am posting things that are relevant to where I’m at right now, because the truth is not only do people love it, Chris, but what I’ve seen happen is that you start to open up doorways and pathways and opportunities that didn’t exist before. Okay. You’re actually not servicing the way that the world’s working right now by honing it in and overthinking your profiles and the posts that you’re doing as opposed to sharing your journey like you mentioned.
Which is the very thing that will have you make some of these new connections, and it really is magical when you start to do that. But it’s hard for people, People will hear what we’re saying here, right? Chris? Be like, oh yeah, I get it. I get what they’re saying, but am I actually gonna do that?
Am I actually gonna cross the chasm? And what’s a safe place for me to land? Do I have to just share everything? And I think this is a personal thing to an extent, but I think the basic mindset shift is what you’re sharing. Let’s get away from this needs to be perfect. This needs to be so well thought out. This has to be the thing that I’m doing and I won’t change it in a month, two months, or a year. No get away from that and start getting in the flow and I think that’s what’s gonna win.
Chris: At some point in the past 20 years, we all became aware of this idea of like, if you put it on the internet, it’s there forever.
And that is technically true. If you put it on the internet, it’s outta your hands. It could be anywhere who knows who has it at the same time, things are so ephemeral right now. You make something and you post it and in a day it’s gone. Mm-hmm. I’ve made a video that, got a million views, Todd, and a couple of weeks afterwards it’s like it never even happened in a way. I mean, it still gets some likes and clicks and stuff, but no one is like referring to that as a cultural touchpoint and no one is pinning Chris Thide to that video forevermore. And it was a minute long video, so it’s not like it’s my life story.
I contain multitudes. So I think we just have to hold this in the right, it’s loosely holding to it, right? Yeah you wanna be aware that especially if you’re career focused, you’re not like having a yard sale all the time where all your dirty laundry is flying out onto the internet. But on the flip side, if you’re professionally oriented and you’re growing and you’re showing that growth as you go. The stakes are not that high with these things. It’s not like they get picked up by the nightly news and everyone calls you out because God forbid you’ve decided to grow from the career you’re in right now, and you’re a little bit unclear in the way you communicated it or like whatever you’re worried about.
Todd: it’s such a good point, man. Everything has gotten so decentralized and there’s so much content and information out there and this is something that big celebrities, and huge influencers are dealing with because there is no thing that they’re gonna make that’s gonna be, like you said, that cultural touch point.
The thing that they need to do to maintain their influence is to actually be really consistent and they need to be posting a lot. It’s a lot more of quantity when you get to that level, and I’m not sitting here recommending that all of our listeners start posting three, four, or five times a day.
Not at all. But it’s a worthy thing to think about that what you’re posting is not all of a sudden defining you and your whole network’s gonna see that post and it’s gonna be, oh my God, they’re doing that thing and now it changes the way that they think about you. That’s not how this works.
I mean, think about how you’re interacting and receiving information from your network. it’s like very light touch point. You’re seeing very quick summaries from a lot of things. It’s just the way the world is working right now. And so we have to let go of this idea that what we post is so serious and so meaningful.
It’s more about the narrative. It’s more about getting into the flow, and actually just releasing and just starting to share. Because again, this is just the way the world is working right now. And our whole premise here, Chris, is to help professionals, like people 35 and up reinvent their careers, right? And create businesses and create opportunities and work that can last 20, 30, 40 years from right now. . And the way that it’s working, what we’re seeing right now very clearly in our community and all the people we’re working with is that the ones that are gonna win are gonna be very flexible and very open-minded, and very vulnerable in some ways as they’re sharing. Because it’s gonna be a moving target, and we just have to understand that that’s the nature of the world right now. And so that’s why we’re doing this podcast.
Like we’re embodying this, like we’re talking about what we care about. Because we understand that every episode we’re gonna do is gonna be very different and there’s no one episode that’s gonna be the thing that’s reinvention. Right? And so I think that what you’re saying here is really wise, it does need to begin with mindset.
And then you gotta start to plan it out a little bit. Like, well, what am I gonna do? What is my actual approach? And I do want to get there on this episode a little bit
Chris: I think we should get there. And one thing maybe to frame that up is social media itself, the way it works technically has changed a lot in just the last few years. I know a lot of people we talk to, and I know that I was in this mindset a couple of years ago, sometimes we’re worried about posting what we really think or what we are doing out there because we’re worried that like aunt Sally is gonna see that, or whatever it is. We have these people in our lives who are sort of tangentially close to us, but they’re connected on social. It’s like this Facebook mentality that’s kind of antiquated of like all these judging eyes are gonna see this. Truth is people are gonna see what you put out there, right?
You want people to see what you put out there. That’s actually the goal, but we’ll get you there. But the point is, the way social media works right now, it’s much more about the content and who’s interested in the content. When I talk about career coaching, the people who see my videos by and large are people who are interested in career coaching, who are career coaches, who are selling to career coaches. It’s not like just my cousin, you know? Right. There’s one cousin who sees it ’cause he is interested in this stuff and he likes the videos and there’s a bunch of cousins who don’t see it. So we have to get out of this mindset cause I think a lot of these people, it’s the judges in their family and their friends and their imagined projection of
Todd: Yes
Chris: who’s gonna see it. I have a client who I talk to right now. She’s gonna listen to this episode and we talk exactly about this point where it’s like, I’m concerned that like these people from my past are gonna hear my podcast.
Todd: Yeah.
Chris: And I’m like, you should be so lucky. Put your heart out there in the world, like this is your thing that you want to do.
Are they in your life now actively? Like who even cares? We’re projecting this idea of a judge who actually cares. The truth is most of ’em aren’t even gonna find your podcast.
Todd: Yeah. I mean, here’s the thing about what you’re touching on is like, the real, I love that we always go there.
We get to this point where it’s like the real thing that’s happening. We’re scared to share ourselves authentically because we’re worried about what other people think about us. Okay. And that’s just real. You’re not gonna come onto this episode and just have that solved. Like I still deal with this.
Like we all deal with it to some extent. You know, when we’re talking about reinvention, the more that we turn to that issue and actually realize that it really is vapor. People don’t really care. Okay. They just don’t. They don’t have time to care. They’re in their own world just like you are. You know? You’re in your own world about your life and everything that’s going on. Well, so are they. Right. And will some people judge you and have thoughts about, well, who’s that person to do it? Yeah, probably.
Chris: Sure.
Todd: But like who give us a flying f you know, at the end of the day, like learning to let that go is the linchpin for being free and starting to like get into the flow and to find your networks of people.
Because what you also said there is so true that, and Gary V talks a lot about this, like the way that the social media posts, the posts that you do, okay, will get out there is by interest, right? So the things that you’re talking about, like we post a lot about career stuff, career pivoting, career reinvention, all this stuff, right?
The algorithms are really smart now. This is just the way that it works. They want our content to get in front of people that are interested in those topics. And so that’s very freeing because now I can be more liberated to share the things that I’m passionate about as I’m letting go of my fear of judgment from Aunt Sally, right?
And all these people that I have these stories around. I’m also recognizing that the algorithms want to get that in front of people that are really interested in those topics. So. That’s how you wanna start thinking about it. It’s interest based. Right. And it’s, and it’s also a very present moment, interest based, right?
’cause things change. So what you’re dealing with is just getting in the process of sharing yourself. Right. And this is how Reinventors are gonna start winning the game faster.
Chris: Oh yeah.
Todd: Look, you know me like I’m a big fan of people 40 and up, starting to post on social media.
That’s how we met, man. We met on TikTok. You and I just started TikTok accounts. I was posting three times a day, man. You know you were posting once a day. Yeah. And I was having fun with it. And I was doing that as an a smart experiment as we talk about to see like what would it be like for me to start doing this thing?
And I found a business partner, an awesome one, and this podcast was derived from me posting on TikTok every day. And you as well. And I’m not saying everyone needs to do that. But, there’s something there that is valuable to do.
Chris: Yeah.
Todd: So I hope this is motivating just to start looking at your socials with a more flexible mindset.
Start changing your profiles. Start announcing what you’re up to without being so attached to what other people think about you. And the fact that that announcement may not be the thing that you’re doing in a month or two months or three months, that’s okay. Right,. It’s more about getting in the flow.
Chris: I want just add a little caveat to that, right? There’s a timing thing about this that, we’ve talked about on this podcast and we talk about it in our community. If you literally are like, I am leaving my job now, or I’m getting pushed out and I’m just starting to contemplate reinvention, I don’t know that necessarily you wanna hop on Instagram and TikTok and start yapping about that, right in that moment,
Take some time. Oh, drum roll please, Todd. Guess what I’m gonna say? Mm-hmm. Take some time to get
Todd: Clarity.
Chris: Clarity.
Todd: Is that our new thing? For clarity, we’re gonna have like a
Chris: whole, that’s every time we announce clarity. We do.
Todd: Oh man.
Chris: Yeah. It is one of those things where we’re not telling you to necessarily just go out there unstructured, or as we’ve said on other episodes, willy nilly right into the world of social media.
But earlier probably than you think. Mm-hmm. It’s great to get out there. And listen, I’m also gonna step outta social media for one moment and just say for our reinventors, it is a great exercise in general, whether it is in person, whether it is in email to people you know, you are going to be telling people a new story they’ve not heard before, that you don’t necessarily have the perfect words and narrative to, and you’re sometimes gonna say things that you later don’t believe in or you grow out of or you regret.
And guess what? You’re not gonna die ’cause you did that.
Your body, your nervous system is so fearful of like rejection from the group that literally it’s this thing we’ve talked about where people fear public speaking more than death. Yeah, right. Yeah. You’re not gonna die if you say the wrong thing in these settings.
And so it’s like so fraught with all this literally like existential tension around it. Honestly, Todd, I think I was using TikTok and I think you were a little bit as like a practice ground.
Todd: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Chris: That was the driving range for me. You know, I was just kind of like seeing what happens and then like when something went well, I’d put it on Instagram, but I was like, I don’t know anybody on TikTok. Let me play around in this space.
Todd: It was very freeing for me to do that, right? Like I didn’t know anyone. And there’s a setting on there that was like, do you wanna invite your contact list? and I said, no. So I wanted to have total freedom, but actually this, this is a really important point ’cause I know it’s very motivating, all right, I’m gonna start changing my profiles. I’m gonna start posting. You’re right, this is the time before you do that to create some form of game plan. Okay? And what we recommend here is to spend some time, and we want you thinking about this, what is my social media strategy? you’re all not gonna be like me or you and posting on TikTok every day.
Okay, that’s fine. But we do want you to spend some time thinking about your LinkedIn. How is your profile? Okay? Do you post on there? And what can you learn about what other people are doing that are similar to you about what they’re doing? And can you start playing on that platform? Okay. Instagram as well.
TikTok, the way I started to do this, I took two months before I did anything, Chris, on social media. I took two months and I went on all these platforms and I was watching people and I was taking notes and I was learning. And guess what? Some of these people had courses, like mini courses or. PDFs, you know, and I downloaded them.
I was like, okay. I was learning the terrain. And I think that this is a really smart thing to do, right, for Reinventors is to say, all right. I never really thought about having a social media strategy or building out a personal brand. It’s all personal branding. Okay? Like this is the time to be establishing your personal brand in some way.
Even if your reinvention entails still working in a corporate and environment, that’s fine, but that does not necessarily mean it’s gonna last for the next 10 years. This is a push, okay to think about your personal brand because it’s gonna become more and more important as time goes on, and so I’m pretty direct on that.
I really do believe that people need to sit down with themselves. Need to start looking and look, there isn’t like 20 platforms. There’s like five, that you need to consider, right? I mean, and there’s probably two or three that are gonna become your main ones. But start thinking about a plan. Start thinking, what can I do to build my personal brand that is going to remain immune to the incredible changes that are happening in the world and in my industry. Okay? Because that’s what you have power over, is the way that you communicate, the way that you establish yourself. And the people that do this, Chris, are just gonna win, in my opinion.
They’re just gonna win. And that’s why I’m pretty strong that Reinventors need to take a look at that.
Chris: The more that it’s you, authentically you, uniquely you, the less it is at risk of being affected or taken away by algorithmic changes, by
Todd: right
Chris: economic changes, by business, structural changes. I mean, that is your moat in a sense around your personal brand and whatever mode you end up going towards.
So this is really a call and really reinvention is, this is the core of reinvention is we’re building it around you. Right. It’s really who you are and we want everyone that we talk to, all of our listeners, all the people in our community to get to a place where their work is really centered around who they are.
S ocial media is a really great, not only proving ground, but place to explore, honestly, to explore who you are. Because when you’re speaking things out into the world, it’s different than when you’re just sort of walking around and carrying your idea of your identity in your head there, right?
Todd: Let’s, Let’s talk about that for a second, right? Yeah. Like, think about you, obviously
Chris: mm-hmm.
Todd: We’ve done a lot of episodes. Now you’ve got a ton of wisdom and this is one of the biggest pain points that I’ve seen for people that are 35 and above who have lived a life and gotten some wisdom and had some experiences.
There’s this pain that walks around of not being able to share it. I’ve learned things and I give it here and there to friends and people tell me, oh, like you’re wise, and you know about that. Like every one of us has a group of people that look up to us and follow us and admire us for the way that we think about things and the way that we do things.
Every single person. Okay. It’s like amazing and there’s this existential pain and it gets stronger as you get older, by the way, that, oh my God, I need to like figure out a way to give this back. And guess what? I had this aha moment about a year ago. I was like, wait a minute.
There’s like social media platforms that have a billion people on each one of them.
There’s a lot of people out there that I can probably help in some way. Something that I say some perspective that I have, right? That can help move the needle for people. It’s very freeing, for people to look at it that way without any attachment that I’m trying to become an influencer or I’m worried about what other people think.
Like it’s not about that, it’s not about that at all. It’s actually about sharing yourself and giving back whatever wisdom that you have. By the way, and I’ve seen this again and again, it accelerates your reinvention. Opportunities happen. Like magic opens up, people come to you, I met you like, things happen when you start to do this, and it’s just crossing that chasm.
Okay. So I would say making that plan, even right here as you’re listening to this, can you be somebody that’s like, yeah, these guys are right. I need to do that. I need to figure out something. Whatever it is, you don’t need to know exactly what it is you need to do.
Chris: Keep it light and high level to start. Don’t go crazy.
Todd: Let’s spend a month. Yeah, spend a month or two. Yeah. Saying, what is my social media strategy? How am I changing my profiles? What will I post? What platforms am I going to use? What am I actually trying to do? Another thing that happens when you make a game plan, Chris, is you start to understand what you wanna have happen in the world. You mentioned clarity, but you can start to align this social media strategy with what you really wanna have happen in your life.
And this starts to get fun, right? And you start to actually see, wow, like things are happening and my life is changing in a really good way. And I haven’t felt this free before. I haven’t felt this motivated before. And that’s when the light goes on. And we’re seeing this in our community, right? Like we’re seeing this happen with people that are like, wait, I can have this life.
I can make these things happen. I’m no longer in some self-made prison. And I think that this was all relevant for you, in your reinvention and
Chris: a hundred percent
Todd: like sharing on social and like what you did, you probably felt so free just to be able to start doing that.
Chris: Like you said, even without any attachment to I’m gonna be an influencer, or I’m gonna get this many followers, or this or that, it’s like, listen, there’s a lot of blocked creatives walking around out there.
Mm-hmm. And I know there’s a lot because every human being is creative. By definition we are creative. And it doesn’t mean that you have to be an abstract painter to be creative. There are so many different flavors of it, but that feeling when you are not expressing what you can give back, especially if you’re like, we’re helpers. Right? And most people have this orientation, like we said, businesses help people. We’re helpers. For me it’s literally sitting like it’s blocked in my chest. Mm-hmm. And being able to express it in, you know, in this podcast, in our community on social media. And to put that out there, I don’t care if it gets one, like Right. If it gets one, like one person got something good from it. That’s actually great. It’s one of those things where I don’t care if it gets zero likes just getting it off your chest and putting it out there. Something changes, something metabolizes and it actually helps you move your thinking forward, right?
So my blocked creatives, and I know there are legion of you out there, my blocked creatives. If you’re not finding this mode of self-expression through some channel, may we suggest. Exploring social media. Yeah. May we suggest in general, just exploring unblocking that with no attachment to outcome or result, just the experience itself.
Try that and tell us how you feel.
Todd: Yeah, the cool thing about this, Chris, is that because of the onslaught of content from AI and how many billions of people are also just on social media and the fact that we said earlier that your stuff is just gonna go into this massive fray.
Like no one’s really looking at it. That’s good. Like it’s low stakes. Have fun with it. Start experimenting with it and you know what we’re all really looking for, and I really believe in this concept of micro communities, right? That’s what we built a community for reinvention as opposed to doing, here’s our six week course where you can reinvent your career in six weeks.
No. Like the way that the world is going is into a more decentralized place and what that means. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t hyper-focused groups doing real work because there is, right? And what you’re looking for is your people. You’re looking for the people that resonate with the things that you care about.
And the business that you wanna run and the type of work you wanna be doing. Right. So reinvention for us, we are calling in people who resonate with this idea of, yeah, like my career is a little bit in flux. I don’t know what the next 10, 20 years are gonna be like, but I wanna explore that.
And I’m really interested in this idea that it can be even better than what I did before. And reinvention, like we’ve talked about, is different than just career pivoting. Right, because we’re gonna push you to think about your mindset and to get clarity and think about what you’d really wanna have happen.
It’s a little different, like we do a little bit more personal growth work here that isn’t for everybody. Okay? Some people just wanna career pivot, that’s fine. But our micro community is calling in people that wanna be in that conversation and want tools and want accountability and all these things that we do.
Okay. And so that’s what you’re looking for in social media. You’re not looking to change the world by your posts. You’re not looking to like be this thought leader. No, you’re looking for your people. You are looking for the, the humans that you want to connect with because you care about what they care about.
And together, when you’re in these groups, you grow together faster. Okay. And so it’s another frame about what you’re looking for on social media and getting out of, and you mentioned before we got on this call. The power of just being really vulnerable and authentic. ’cause we’re starting to look at some of our social media stuff, right?
Mm-hmm. And you had just listened to a podcast that was about sharing, hey, like everyone’s using AI to take their idea and then create all these social media posts, but you listen to somebody that was saying, yeah, like. The more obscure and almost bizarre or authentic that you are, the more that it’s gonna pop out.
Like talk to that a little bit, what that perspective was. ’cause I think there’s some value in that. ’cause everyone’s using AI now to create tons of content, but there’s other ways to look at it.
Chris: We have talked multiple times on this podcast about my nemesis LinkedIn. LinkedIn. I don’t know why I hate LinkedIn so much. Well actually
Todd: You sent me that one text of Skeletor. I dunno if that was around LinkedIn, but that cracked me up.
Chris: It was Skeletor going. Ah, yeah,
Todd: yeah,
Chris: yeah. Exactly. Just in case you want to code that we are millennials. Slash Gen X, let’s make a He-Man reference. Yeah. Uh, out, out in theaters today, oh,
Todd: by the way, they’re making a new He-Man movie.
I dunno if you saw that. I saw a commercial. I’m like, all right. They’re bringing that back. All right. Back. Nobody one even knows what He-Man is.
Chris: They, they want like a bunch of like 45 and 50-year-old dudes in the theater to watch. He-Man, apparently I don’t exactly great demo to sell to
Todd: I have the power! They did that whole thing.
Chris: Amazing. That was, uh, early childhood for me. But you know, I do know why I hate LinkedIn. With all due respect to the platform of LinkedIn, I hate LinkedIn because I see the same posts there over and over and over and over again, and it’s the same structure and it’s the same length, and it’s the same inspirational picture of the poster and their family standing on a pier looking off into the middle distance and, emoji led sentences in the middle of it. You know, 14 things that my kid hitting into a fielder’s choice in his little league game taught me about data science. It’s the same stuff over and over again and it’s just schlock, it’s AI slop.
Todd: Yep.
Chris: And honestly, I actually think some of it’s human generated slop because they’ve seen what AI slop looks like, right? And they’re trying to emulate it and look like it. And for our own business, Todd, I’m going down this road of trying to figure out, well, let me embrace the demon, let me lean into LinkedIn and the direction I’m going is starting to say, I’m not gonna just try to fit into their game and do what they do.
We don’t need any more of that.. Let’s be I be me, you be you, we be us on LinkedIn in an honest and authentic and open and vulnerable way. And yeah, you can do some homework around how to optimize it. I mean, we’re getting into business tactics. Do I put the right hashtags on it? Do hashtags even matter? All of that stuff. Great. Knock yourself out, but just don’t be yet another version of the same thing you’ve seen a thousand times before, maybe in the short term that gets you more engagement or followers or whatever it is, but it’s got no legs long term. It’s not helping you find your people and you find your people by sharing yourself.
I feel like I should have a gavel to end that monologue.
Todd: But I just wanna say one thing about this, because, and this is actually really big, you’re embodying a reinvention premise here that I just wanna shine a light on for people because when we met you were just like so anti LinkedIn and it’s a joke that we talk about here.
Like, you hate LinkedIn, you hate LinkedIn, and you have like good following there ’cause you’re a corporate guy for a long time, right? And I’ve been kind of gently nudging you. I’m like, look. We’re doing a business on career reinvention. All of the people who really need what we’re doing are on LinkedIn, like,
Chris: where could they be Todd?
Todd: I was like just gently nudging you, because you’re like so against it. And I’m not a LinkedIn guy at all. I mean, look, I, that is not my platform ’cause I’ve been doing other things.
Right. You know, and so I was like maybe Chris should, like lead this LinkedIn thing because he actually has a profile on there, but he hates it so much. What are we gonna do?
Chris: I thought it was a punishment.
Todd: You came to it yourself. And this is huge. This is like really important because you had a mindset shift around it. Yeah. You’re like, oh wait a minute. I have a story about how bad it is, but actually I need to embrace this. And all of a sudden in the last week you’ve gone in and it’s unbelievable.
You’re all over it and I feel like you’re excited about it and in a different way because your lens around it shifted away from this sucks and this represents everything that I hate about the corporate life and culture. You know, that has really pissed me off and hurt me for a long time.
And now I’m looking to do something else into, wait a minute, no. LinkedIn is an amazing platform that has a lot of amazing humans, that really need our help. And how can we just get in there and be authentic and share what we’re doing in the hopes that maybe some of these folks follow our podcast. Or download our workbook or even join our community, whatever it is that we do. And I think that has relieved you. I’ve watched you just be like, oh yeah, that’s what this is. And I’m saying it so clearly because this is a message for all reinventors out there. We have preconceived notions of social media that is so deeply rooted in real things.
I’m not saying it’s not real, but you can shift that and I think you really embody that right? In what’s happening right
Chris: now. Yeah. Obviously reinvention, it’s right in the name change and growth. You have to be able to change the way you think and feel and be okay with that and not feel like, oh, I said that thing and I believe that thing, and now I have to take that to my grave with me.
That’s not the way I’m gonna live my life. And when you look at something like LinkedIn, maybe somebody feels the same way about Instagram or Twitter or whatever platform it is or whatever, even milieu, outside social media that we’re talking about or thinking about. Listen, if I think the content on LinkedIn sucks, well I could either just not go on LinkedIn or if LinkedIn is a place where a lot of people I can help by putting my passion and what I’m good at to good use. If they’re there and I need to connect with them, well, what I can do is go on LinkedIn and make content that doesn’t suck. And I don’t have to be beholden to what everyone else is doing there. And in fact, that is something that I’m lit up about, as you said, Todd. I’m really excited about that right now.
Todd: Yeah, I’ve seen, I’ve seen this as big shift. Yeah. It’s again, embodying the tactics of reinvention, to change our preexisting beliefs around things like this. Things like social media, things like LinkedIn, particular platforms it’s really interesting how like we have these ideas around these things.
so, you know, As we start to close this one out, Chris, the big recommendation for me, for everyone out there listening to this, if you’ve gotten to this point in this episode, I do want you spending the next month or even two months thinking about your social media plan.
Okay. Like, this is not to go willy-nilly out there. Okay? Like, I love that word that we’re using now.
Chris: No, willy-nilly,
Todd: like the 1940s now, where we’re really aging ourselves. But you know, like no willy-nilly, you’re gonna make a plan. You really Think about the platforms. Okay.
And the reason why as well, is that you don’t want to just start posting, especially if you haven’t posted in a long time.
Chris: Yeah.
Todd: Do you guys realize that these platforms will push out big time, a new post that you haven’t done in a while. If you haven’t posted in a year on LinkedIn and you do post, it’s gonna go out there to a lot of people, like thousands of people will see that that’s the way that it works, because they want you getting the dopamine hit of seeing, you know, a lot of people see your post, so that way you start doing it more.
Therefore, be strategic. Make a plan. Know that going in, Think about your profiles in a way that. Like, what do I want people to see about me right now? Do I want them to DM me? What about my work right now do I want them to understand that it’s really important to me? And have it be really clear, because in reinvention you might be exploring several different things and it can be a mistake to add in too much like we had as someone in our community that is building out fractional work for their design, abilities that they’ve had a 20 year career designing stuff but they’re also into this more kind of personal growthy world of men’s work, helping men, do more personal development stuff. And they were trying to combine the two into a profile headline that when they showed it to our group, didn’t make much sense to us. And the question was, well, yeah, but I’m reinventing, so I want people to know. But this is the nuance, right? Because you can’t just do everything all at once, which is why you need to start making a plan and experimenting and getting some help.
So that way he got feedback from our group about, oh, that really wasn’t that great. So now he shifted it into something better, which is why you need to have accountability when you’re doing this but, for the purpose of this podcast, Chris, I think the goal is to get people motivated, right? To actually go ahead and do these things and man, I love it, I think you and I could go off on this one for another like two hours, but I think we gotta cap it soon. Yeah. What do you think?
Chris: yeah, I agree. I mean, again, I think that’s the takeaway for people is let’s. Put ourselves out there. Let’s do it in a smart way, but let’s get comfortable with this.
Because if you’re reinventing your career, you are going to be putting yourself out there. You are going to be open and authentic and vulnerable. That is how you win. Mm-hmm. And it feels great. You’re gonna get over some fears along the way. That’s all part of the package. But trust us. Lean into this.
Mm-hmm. Go towards it and yeah, Todd, man, this is a great topic. I think we could go for another couple hours on it, but I appreciate you, man. This is, thanks for the nudge on LinkedIn, by the way, too. That’s Good partnership and good accountability from you to push me in that direction so gently.
Todd: Yeah. I didn’t know either. Like this just came through like I mean I was in it with you. I didn’t know we were gonna do LinkedIn , and have a real strategy there, but it makes sense for us and that’s just part of this mindset of being open and flexible and having collaborators that can give you feedback and having a community or others that can be with you on this ride, because there’s a lot that as individuals we can’t see. but together we’re better, you know? And so that’s, at the heart of reinvention, like doing this together. So we hope you love this episode. Follow us along here if you’ve liked what we’ve shared, you always can go to our website at reinvention.biz.
We have a reinvention workbook that you can check out and download. It’s amazing. We have a community that we always talk about that’s always available to you we do amazing things in there and at least follow this podcast because the conversations we’re having here we believe are really important right now, you know, for people that are in this mindset of transition.
And we’re gonna continue to slice and dice it in countless ways. So, grateful for you, brother. Thank you for listening and, uh, we’ll see you next time.
