How Nat Berman Mastered LinkedIn and Grew His Reach to 80k+ Followers

When Nat Berman’s first blog took off, he quit his job and never looked back. 

He went on to grow a portfolio of 25 sites that reached millions of visitors every month and earned him millions of dollars in profit.

But he has since moved on to different projects. Today he’s a LinkedIn guru with over 80k followers and he created a private membership community to support founders and entrepreneurs. 

In this interview, he talks about the strategies he used to build his content websites and how he uses similar ones to grow a following on LinkedIn.

He shares excellent advice for succeeding on the platform and talks about how he took his success there and turned it into a group coaching business.

Watch the Full Episode

Nat starts off talking about how he built his first blog back in 2007. Once it took off, he never looked back. He went on to create a portfolio of very profitable sites in the years that followed and grew them organically.

However, in 2022, like so many others, the HCU came along and decimated his websites, which forced him to pivot.

His new focus was LinkedIn, and he talks about his beginnings on that platform. He eventually met his partner and together they created Join Brand Built, a business and branding community.

He shares what he misses about content websites and then compares building them out to his strategies on LinkedIn. He talks about the similarities between the two and what made him dive into the platform and try to grow a following.

Eventually, people started reaching out to him on LinkedIn and asking him about his coaching services. And although he did 1-on-1 coaching for a while, he realized he really preferred a group coaching setting. 

That led him to change gears again and start building a community with his partner, Darren. Nat talks about their beginnings on Skool, how they switched to another platform, and how they determined their avatars and pricing structure. With 250 members at present, growth is slow and steady. 

Then the conversation shifts to his success on LinkedIn: how he grew his account and the strategies he recommends for getting started. He talks about the most important aspects of a LinkedIn profile, his particular formula and the acronym HSSRC, and creating a brand on the platform.

If you’re worried you missed the boat on LinkedIn, Nat has a few opinions to share, and he also talks about how to get your first 5k followers.

He also shares some excellent tips for coming up with good content ideas and connects the process with SEO, long tail keywords, and pillar content to make it easier to understand.

Lastly, Nat talks about the people he’s targeting specifically for Brand Built.

Links & Resources

Topics Nat Berman Talks About

• How he got started online
• How he was impacted by the HCU
• How he pivoted to LinkedIn
• Why he misses content sites
• How content sites are similar to LinkedIn
• How he grew a following on linked in
• His 1-on-1 coaching services
• Building his group coaching and branding business
• Figuring out his pricing structure
• Growing the community
• An average day for him
• Getting started on LinkedIn
• Strategies for organic growth
• Is it too late to get on LinkedIn?
• How to get 5k followers
• Creating content
• His main targets

Transcript

Jared: All right. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. Today we’re joined by Nat Berman with brand, uh, brand built. com and that welcome on board.

Nat: Hey, how you doing? It’s actually join brand built dot com. I don’t want people to go on the wrong side, but it’s all good. Yeah,

Jared: I mixed up the brand and the built and leave off the join.

You know, we’re not starting 2025 off. Very good here. So hopefully it’s only nothing but uphill from here.

Nat: It’s completely fine. All

Jared: good. Hey, thanks for coming on board. We’re going to be talking about kind of a classic story in many ways a story about. What a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast have gone through, which is kind of changing traffic sources, changing online environments and how you’ve adapted.

Uh, I don’t want to spoil it too much. Tell us about who you are, give us some backstory, and then we’ll get into the topics we’re going to discuss today.

Nat: Sure. No problem. Um, so I guess, you know, going back a fair amount of time, uh, by trade, I was, I was a recruiter for like six and a half years in New York city.

So, um, had nothing to do with what I do now. And what I was doing for 16, 17 years has nothing to do with what I do now. But, um, you know, like a lot of people didn’t love what I did. Uh, a buddy of mine sent me this email in 2007 saying there’s this site called blog spot on Google. And, uh, hopefully we’re like similar in age so you can understand all this stuff.

Um, and, and I was like, what the hell is blog spot? And, you know, long story short, I started a website, uh, by the name of uncoached. com and it grew very quickly. And it was, uh, it was very much of the same ilk as like a barstool sports or, you know, Maxim ask men, a lot of those sites at that time, which came after the celebrity gossip sites of 2004.

And so I learned how to grow that organically. Um, I was constantly sending my links to sites like sports illustrated. I learned how to use dig. com and read it back in their early days to drive traffic. And so, um, Uncoached like took off. It did, it did pretty well pretty quickly. Um, I took a shot. Uh, it was about nine months after I had started it.

I quit my job in 2008 and kind of never looked back. And then eventually, Uncoached became, um, another site and then another and then another. And so, basically, Built out a portfolio of content-based websites. Uh, we were making money off of display advertising only. No, no affiliates. Just all display. Uh, you know, we were in a bunch of bad networks, even ran a network ad network at one point.

Um, and that was my business for a very long time and it was awesome. Loved it and did very well. Eventually, um, it got to a point where. Um, SEO wasn’t as great as it was. So I grew all my traffic organically. It was all SEO. Um, we just created tons of content every single day. People used to always ask, you know, how do you do SEO?

I’m like, I don’t know. I just create good content every day. Like I seriously, to this day, I still, I think most SEO agencies are a load of crap. It’s like, dude, you don’t really know all this stuff. Um, you put in a good title, you get a lot of backlinks, you know, you can do very well. And so, but then it was what?

2022, I think is when, whenever that helpful content rolled out and just a lot of websites got decimated, uh, mine among them and, uh, kind of had to pivot. And I was very fortunate that one of my biggest sites I sold like that summer. Wow. Just as though, like just when some declines were happening and that was a pretty big exit for me.

Um, and, but I still have, you know, a good 20 plus websites and they still get organic traffic. It’s just not like it used to be. And so I really had to pivot, um, at the time. And while all this was going on, I had been actively creating content on LinkedIn, which started in 2019. So there was a kind of an overlap there, but.

I saw the writing on the wall very early on and just kind of knew I needed to focus on something else. And so what was interesting about LinkedIn is I grew very quickly on there. Um, following a very similar footprint as in terms of how I grew my websites, just like dig, you built this big network.

LinkedIn was very similar. You know, you have all these users and creators and they’re all supporting each other’s content. Um, so the following there grew very quickly. In the first year, I think it was like 25, 000 followers or so. And then all of a sudden people are asking me about coaching. And since all my content was very entrepreneurial, I used to just sit in my backyard and take videos.

Um, I was kind of known as the guy who wore t shirts in the snow. That was sort of like my gimmick a long time ago. Um, and then, uh, so the LinkedIn account grew, but at that time I was still doing both the sites and LinkedIn. LinkedIn. And I got to admit, I sort of burnt out on coaching. Um, and I sort of took almost like a year and a half, two year hiatus from LinkedIn.

And all the while that’s when I sold the website. That’s when I saw organic traffic tank, this, this, everything sort of happened. And I was like, you know what? I’m going to give LinkedIn another shot. And. While I was always active on there, I wasn’t really posting content as regularly as I used to or really pushing as much as I had used to.

So January 2023, I kind of went all in and I went just ballistic and was just on the platform hours and hours a day, just trying to figure it out. Uh, things grew. Somehow I wound up meeting who my current business partner is. I went on his podcast. He had this podcast called, I took a hike and we took a hike and, uh, we really got along and, uh, it was January of 2024 when we started brand built, which is basically a company, it’s a business and branding community, and we help people, uh, grow their brands organically, uh, and leverage those brands to grow their business and build their relationships.

And so, um, it’s just been, it’s been phenomenal. It’s just, but it’s, it’s, it’s weird. It’s weird laying it out there like that. So

Jared: that’s

Nat: where I’m at.

Jared: Do you miss the content game? And I know you’re still in the content game, but do you miss the content website game? I guess that’s the better way to ask it.

Nat: Honestly, I kind of do. Only because when I look back on it, it was an interesting formula. And it was really like, if you had just kept your head down and posted content every single day, quality stuff, It was inevitable. You were going to grow your search traffic. And if it was really good, it was inevitable.

You were going to grow an audience. And I used to love that because it was almost like this never ending thing where you could always keep growing, keep growing, keep growing. And I think that was unfortunately a delusion of a lot of us. Because it sort of stopped, right? But I do, I mean, when I started off, I was writing over 20 articles a day.

Myself, I did everything myself and it was very taxing. Right. But you know, I guess this is. Sort of something that a lot of people at least I say in terms of entrepreneurs It’s like if you’re willing to give up two to three years and really bust your ass You can set yourself up for something for a very long time And that’s exactly how the website thing played out played out.

It was like the first two to three years It was a lot, you know tons of writing but then eventually You start using leverage, you hire writers, and you can, you can rinse and repeat the process. So I do miss that. I miss the growth. I do miss, I don’t miss writing so much because I think I just did too, so much damn writing that I was like, eh, I don’t know if I really want to do this as much anymore.

But I, I miss how, uh, like fair it seemed. It was almost like the amount of work you put in, your earnings kind of correlated with that. You know, there was, there was very much, it was almost like a linear thing in a weird kind of way. And I just mean fair, like, Hey, like if you put out the right content, it will get seen and you’ll grow in that, in that way that you should.

Um, but you know, things don’t always stay permanently. So now SEO, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about it. Although I’m convinced that if I started a site from scratch and ran it the exact same way that I started back then, it would do just fine. SEO wise. It’s just because all the sites I have right now, there’s so many articles put up.

I could never, I can never fix them.

Jared: Yeah,

Nat: if there is, if there is even fixing to be done.

Jared: Now, let me ask you about those current sites. A lot of people who had themselves in similar situations are trying to find different traffic sources for this content. Right? So, um, you pivoted and went with a LinkedIn and business community approach.

Uh, just curious why. And again, a lot of people listening are struggling to know what the right decision is for themselves in terms of. Their online journey and where they, where they go next, not only this year, but you know, a big picture.

Nat: I just found something. I found that the model of how I grew the websites was very, very similar on LinkedIn, which was basically growing a community.

So, and I also noticed this was back in 2019. The organic reach was on LinkedIn was insane. It was nuts. And I actually missed two years of even bigger organic reach was like 17 and 18. That was like early days of TikTok on LinkedIn. It was, it was nuts. I actually missed those two years. Um, I kind of came in at the tail end of, of when organic reach was really, really being pushed on LinkedIn.

Um, so there was just so many similarities. That it was kind of like a natural progression, but it was also in my head, like it was a big decision. It was more like these websites are not my full time income anymore. Right. And I, and I just knew that I could have kept doing them full time and try to adjust and continue to learn.

And I’ve done a lot of that on the websites, but I still don’t work on the sites for more than half hour a day. Whereas it used to be, you know, all day. Um, so it was really just literally starting an entire new business, um, from scratch. Yeah. And so for me, it was like 16, 17 years of doing it. I was like, ah, I’ll try something else.

I think that’s, that’s kinda, you know, I was like, ah, I’ve been doing this a while. If things come up and opportunities come up. Um, where I can grow in different ways and, and utilize other traffic sources. Of course, I’m open to that. And today it’s very different. Now people are sort of taking traffic into their own hands, which I think is, is something that I regret not having done myself back in the day.

It’s like, Hey, with all that profit, I probably could have reinvested in ads, probably could have started some newsletters, right. And had some more direct traffic sources. And I’m seeing people do that. And I love it. Now they’re really taking advantage of that. Um, sometimes you can, you know, buy clicks on Facebook or buy clicks on Google and you can, maybe you can break even, or maybe you can even profit.

And I think there are opportunities like that that exist. Um, so it’s nice to see that evolve, but. If you’re, it’s very hard. If you’re growing a site organically from scratch, it’s tough today. It’s very, very different than it used to be. Um, and I think for me, I just sort of was like, I don’t know if I feel like putting in the full time effort to learn that whole new game again.

And I was already, you know, entrenched in that game on LinkedIn. So I was like, you know what, this time let’s go really hard and, and. Put, put all my eggs in that basket and see, see where it leads. And so, yeah, it’s worked out.

Jared: You said something that piqued my interest. You said that the, uh, LinkedIn is, is very similar to running a content website, uh, or something you said something along those lines, basically.

Um, Explain that. I’m curious to hear more about that. That, that at first glance, having been someone who has run content websites for over, for probably a decade now, like, I’m curious to hear more about that. Sure. Sure.

Nat: So remember I used the example of dig and you, you remember the, the, the days of dig. I was like one of the power users, right?

Like I, I remember that. And 30 percent of the stuff I would submit eventually hit the front page because I was like a big user on that. I wasn’t quite Mr. Babyman, but I was a big, I was a big, I was a big user. Yeah, I just, I just whipped out that name. So I was, I was a big user on there and it took 3 4 hours a day to become a big user.

It’s not like you just, you know. Become a you a big user on it. They call them power users at the time. I remember that and But the similarity is how you grew on dig is very similar How do you grow on linkedin and you would grow? by Building relationships on that platform with other users Who would then support your content and your stuff will get pushed higher and higher and higher by the algorithm now linkedin has a very Similar setup in the sense that you’re on there and you’re building relationships.

Now, how does that relate to content websites? Same thing on content websites. What was the game in the beginning when you were building websites? You were trying to get links How do you get links? Build relationships with other websites. My big break on websites came when Sports Illustrated finally linked to me.

It was Jimmy Trena at Extra Mustard. Anyone who’s grown websites knows that name. And, well, who grew websites back in the day knows that name. And that set it off. And all of a sudden I was getting linked to by all these other big sites. Now, there’s a very simple correlation there. It’s, you know, Having good content, promoting it, building relationships with other website owners.

What are you doing on LinkedIn? You’re, you’re creating content, hopefully good content. You’re hitting the publish button. And what are you doing? You’re promoting it by building relationships with other business owners, LinkedIn users, who will then see that content and maybe they’re interested in what you have to offer.

It’s very, very, very similar. Um, but you know, different in the sense that you’re growing on one platform, you’re not growing a website, but you’re pushing your own content. Your web page is your LinkedIn profile, right? So you don’t necessarily own it. Um, and so now the game is how do you get people from your LinkedIn page to maybe your website or your service page or your product page?

It’s taking that traffic and moving it over. Can I get them onto a newsletter, right? Can I get them into a webinar? Uh, Book appointments with them, all that kind of stuff. So really that LinkedIn profile is the conduit to whatever business that you want to run.

Jared: You were, you mentioned you started on LinkedIn in 2019.

Um, still a time where organic traffic was very high, although maybe missed a year or two. Uh, you, you re got into it. I believe I have the dates right in 2023. Yeah. It wasn’t until 2024 that you started brand built. So what was the, what was the idea behind going into LinkedIn, especially in 2023 when you dove back into it?

Uh, and did you always know you would have something to start? Was that always the end goal? Uh, and again, I’m talking to people listening who are like, okay, this LinkedIn thing, maybe there’s something for me, but I don’t know the end goal yet.

Nat: No, that’s a great question. And I’ll be honest with you. When I got in, it was to see if I could do it.

Seriously, I got into there. I was like, let me see if I can grow 25, 000 followers because all these people are doing it. I was like, Oh, you know, what the hell? This was like COVID. Everyone was like at home, didn’t know what the hell they wanted to do. And I was like, you know what? I kind of did always want to create content in that way.

I did. To your point, I did miss the content game. I never really created for myself. I never tried like a YouTube page or TikTok or anything like that, but I always knew I had something to say. Um, so LinkedIn, I really took to LinkedIn cause I got to talk about things I really wanted to talk about and just be myself.

And I really enjoyed that. So initially, yes, it was really just to see if I could do it and grow an audience. Then once I hit around 20, 000 followers, I started getting inquiries. People actually started reaching out to me asking if I had coached before. And the weird thing is, is I grew up with a family of therapists and I always Wanted to sort of counsel people, I guess you could say.

I, I just, the websites, I never, I got into grad school. I never went, I was like, I have unfinished business with the websites. I don’t want to let that go. This was like way later in life. I was, you know, 30 or something like that. Now I’m 45. Um, but when I, when I got into the, um, the graduate school. I was like, eh, I still, I still got them.

I still got on Facebook. It was actually later than 30. It was, it was more, it was, oh man, this was a good three to five years into the website stuff. Things were going great with the websites, but I was. I was like, yeah, maybe I’ll be a therapist. I didn’t know. So then, but then I started really looking into coaching and I was like, Oh wow, coaches, they make a pretty good living, like the good ones.

And you know, look at Tony Robbins, you know, but like, but, um, and it was just really weird when people were reaching out to me, like, Hey, I’m growing a business, you know, I could use your help, you know, and that kind of stuff. And so I knew nothing about like how to position my offer or what to even offer any of that kind of stuff.

So I just sort of winged it and I was getting people, but I didn’t know the first thing about, you know, call to actions. I didn’t know any of that. So I hired someone myself. I hired a coach on LinkedIn to sort of teach me that. And they were like, Hey, you’re not doing any calls to action in any of your videos.

All of a sudden I started saying, Hey, hit me up if you’re interested in help. And all of a sudden I was getting all these, you know, much more inbound inquiries. And I just kept learning as I go. So my initial business, which has nothing to do with brand built, I mean, it has something to do with it, but. The initial business was one to one coaching.

That’s all I did. Um, and so when I got burnt out, I think I had like 15 clients and that’s where I was like, Oh, you know, I can’t do this. And I wasn’t particularly charging a lot of money. Didn’t really know what to do. So when I revamped and came back in 2023, the goal became way more intentional. The goal was, okay, now I really want to go after high level executives.

Do one to one charge considerably more. Here’s where things got weird. Same thing happened where I was like, ah, I’m getting tired of this I don’t love it. I’d rather be more of a one to many, you know, and then that’s when I started learning about Communities I was like, oh, what the hell is that? And people were talking about school Skoll that was starting to blow up I was like, Oh, this is interesting.

Why don’t I try that? And so Darren, my partner, Darren Mass, he and I, we were talking about lots of different businesses after we met that first time. And then finally it sort of clicked when I had a conversation with another creator on LinkedIn. It was like, you really should be starting a community. And the only reason I hadn’t is because I knew people that had, and they were doing it by themselves, they burnt out and hated it.

So he told me, he goes, you really need, if you’re going to start a community, you really need to have a partner. Darren was like totally gung ho. We started on school that day. It was like, cause it was so easy to start. Again, that was, we got initial 10 members. We let them in for free. It was like kind of our legacy members and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but you know, I had a lot, you know, we, we, we had a sense created, I created a course that was sort of like a mate, you know, our, our flagship product at the time.

Uh, and it took. You know, and it’s going to take more time. It took a whole year just to figure out what the hell we were doing and what we really wanted out of it. And now it’s considerably different. It’s really, it’s really based on coaching and live calls. The courses are still in there and they’re definitely still staples of the community, but, um, it keeps, it keeps evolving, you know, more and more and more so.

Yeah, I hope I hope that was a reasonable answer. I don’t know. It was

Jared: no, it makes sense. And I think it dovetails nicely into the next question, which is what does the whole thing look like now? What does the community look like? You know, how, how’s it structured? How’s it put together? Who, who, who goes, you know, who’s the avatar of the user?

Who is a part of it?

Nat: It’s a great question. So through this evolution, um, I’ll tell you exactly how it evolved. It was crazy. So. We started off being like, okay, we’re gonna charge a hundred bucks a month for a member. That was our, like, price. It was just even, it was easy, da da da. And we charge a hundred bucks a month.

And that’s going to give you data. You’re going to see like, what are the members like? Who are they? Are they leaving? Is there attrition? You know, what is it like? We didn’t, we didn’t know much. Eventually, we were like, we realized like money kind of talks, right? And so we’re like, you know, we’re going to double our rates.

And we did. We went up to 195. We didn’t do 200, 195. And that really did change the member makeup, really did. But then we also saw, like, okay, well, who are the people that are reading my stuff on LinkedIn? Who are the people reading Darren’s stuff on LinkedIn? Because we started having visions of being, like, Join Hampton and that’s like expensive, even Tiger 21, which is like a hundred K a year.

That’s a little crazy, but, but join Hampton was like this model that we kind of were looking at. And then we started to realize like, that’s not our avatar. That’s not our people. Like, we’re not necessarily, yes, we have people that do over a million a year in revenue and beyond that, but we’re not just sticking to that.

We’re teaching branding, you know, and we’re teaching. And so the one 95 level, we started to see. Well, this is a good level if we want commitment and we want some, some of the folks that we’re trying to target, but is that who we’re actually speaking to? And so what happened was there was some drop off, not a lot.

Um, but Darren and I just in our head, we’re like, we need to make this affordable. And that’s when we decided, you know, what, why don’t we have two tiers? And so we got off of school and the reason for that is because school doesn’t allow you to have tiered pricing, which I’m sure they’ll eventually have, but there wasn’t quite enough optionality with schools.

We moved on to GHL. Uh, so we built this thing homegrown from the start and we offered a 49 option per month and that changed everything. And users started really flooding in a little bit more, but the nice thing is we were still getting 10, 20 percent at the one 95 level. So we made these two access levels.

One of them is called unlimited. And one of them is called community access, which is 49 a month. And that changed everything. And now in our heads, we’re like, this is all we want to do. This is great. Um, and so how we typically, um, get people is. I do demo calls five days a week. So people come to the demo call.

I give them a complete inside look of what we do in the community, what we offer. It’s a half hour call and they either join or they don’t. And, uh, you know, it’s, it’s much simpler that way. We basically have like four to five coaching calls every week. Um, there’s those courses and then the discussion forum is awesome.

So right now there’s like 250 plus members. We’ve got a lot of people at that original, you know, unlimited access. But we launched on the 14th of November and we’ve been averaging over, I think, two members a day, which has been great. That’s exactly what we want. We don’t want to grow crazy fast. We just want to grow at a measured approach.

Like right now, our goal is a thousand members and we’ll kind of take it from there, see where we go, maybe do some different things like retreats and all that. But it’s, Now we have a very clear vision and we know exactly who we’re targeting. It takes time. It takes time.

Jared: Congrats. That’s quite the journey in one year.

That’s a lot to figure out. Um, you know, one year ago you said 2024 January. I mean, we’re doing this interview 2025 January.

Nat: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s been, it’s been, it’s been like weird. Uh, so think about all that.

Jared: It’s in a bit of a transition in terms of your revenue model and in terms of having two tiers versus one, but.

I think what if you could just maybe from a percentage standpoint They give people an idea like what percent of your overall revenue for brand built is tied up in the monthly We’ll call it subscription versus the other things you offer the courses the upsells the private coaching all that. So

Nat: yeah Courses are part of the community.

So those are part of their built

Jared: in.

Nat: Okay,

Jared: so they’re baked.

Nat: They don’t really have any

Jared: Okay. So it’s all there.

Nat: So the one upsell that we have is we do offer private coaching and people basically book those a la carte whenever they want the only other upsells that we have and the coaching, you know, that’s more expensive.

It’s that’s 500 an hour. And we usually get people that they’ll do that. You know, I’m usually on a call at least once a week, you know, with somebody who wanted to book a session. Um, the only, the only other thing, it’s not an upsell is. So when you have community access, you don’t have access to every call.

In which case you have to pay for a call. So we, we liken ourselves to like a gym membership, right? So let’s say you’re at 49. There’s your base membership to the gym. Well, let’s say you wanted a personal training session. If you’re at a gym, what do you have to do? You got to pay. So for us, you have access to X amount of calls per week, which is comes with your community access.

Right. But then you can pay an extra 30 bucks to like, let’s say, join one of my calls on a Monday that you don’t have access to, and it’s all color coded and everything. So we have a calendar where it’s like. You have access to everything in blue, but you don’t have access to anything in green, right? And that’s kind of how it works.

So we we have not done anything like high ticket um Nothing like that. The only like I said the only upsell we have is the private coaching Yes, we do have things in mind where we’re probably going to do a retreat um things of that nature, but So far, we’re just kind of psyched doing what we’re doing.

And our eyes are very dead set on that initial hurdle, which is, we want to get to a thousand members, not necessarily this year, maybe the year after, which would be, which would be pretty cool if we can do that.

Jared: So for someone running a community, a couple hundred members growing. What’s an average day look like for you?

Nat: Good question. Um, so I’m a pain in the ass in the sense that I don’t use VAs and I don’t like anyone going into my LinkedIn account. So it’s, it’s a bit, I have a reasonably sized LinkedIn account and it gets a lot of engagement. So typically my posts are in the. Um, anywhere from six to six hundred to a thousand comments.

So a lot of my days responding to comments, um, I kind of have this like 6 AM to 9 AM, you know, uh, schedule. That’s pretty tough in the morning in the sense that like. So my posts go up at 7 a. m. Every day, seven to nine, I call it the gauntlet. I’m like, don’t bother me. Leave me alone. It’s all responding to comments.

I’m like, it’s insane. Then, uh, you know, I’ll go to the gym, whatever, uh, come home and then it’s. Kind of the rest of my day, which is a lot of outreach. I’ll send a lot of DMS on LinkedIn. I do all my own kind of selling and awareness and all that stuff myself. Uh, we have community calls. I’m on three a week.

So, um, I do my demos every day. Those are at 1230 calls or at one rest of my day after that. Pretty damn reactive, which is awesome

Jared: doing this kind of stuff.

Nat: Yeah. Yeah. Doing this kind of stuff, coaching calls, you know, sometimes one to one calls, uh, I’m not really a big coffee chat guy, but yeah, I mean, um, this is the time, like pretty much 3 PM on, I’m basically done with all the hard shit.

Um, and technically, you know, I’m kind of at a point where everybody always recommends doing it, but like, I just don’t want to, um, where I suppose I could have a VA handle on my engagement, my commenting and even outreach for that, for that matter. But I like doing this stuff. I really like it. So, um, it’s a pretty good gig.

If you ask me, it’s usually like, you know, 6 AM to two is kind of like the, the, I really care about what I’m doing part of the day, whereas the rest, it’s like, it feels so much more reactive.

Jared: Perfect. Segway. I wanted to talk about LinkedIn. Um, I’m sure a lot of people, uh, want to hear some tips for LinkedIn growth.

I was on your LinkedIn page before we started recording. You kind of said some things I was going to say, you get great engagement. Like. You have about that time to record about 80, 000 plus 82, 000 followers. But I mean, your posts tend to get more comments than they do likes. Uh, I was going through, I was like 600 to a thousand comments, uh, uh, comments on every single one.

You do one a day. You clearly follow very from what I could tell a very structured format in terms of how you post every day looks very similar Some similar kind of prompting in terms of how you’re thinking through what you’re talking about that day so there’s there’s a lot of thought behind what you do is I guess what i’m getting at and it clearly has a kind of a A formulaic approach that works and then a response that is very high Talk to us about in getting engagement on linkedin How to how to start and how to grow and some of the things you’ve learned along the way You

Nat: Um, so the reason the comments are more than the likes is because I respond to everyone.

So that’s kind of a rule of mine. An internal rule is I, I just, I just think it’s good business to always respond to comments, even though now there’s a shitload of AI comments. So that’s kind of annoying. But if I were someone starting from scratch on LinkedIn, I’d probably be a little bit more intentional than I was when I started.

Um, but you know, to me, there’s. I always like to keep things as simple as possible. People would always ask me, you know, How’d you grow your websites to where they are? And I would always say good content every day for years And people used to think I had some sort of inside information on seo and i’m like nope I just had good content go up every day for a number of years And so on linkedin i’ve narrowed it down very simply in the same way good content every day for years but also A very deliberate effort to engage with other people’s posts.

Those are the two big ones before all that. What I think is also extremely important is having a really good profile. That’s the initial thing, how I usually connect with people on LinkedIn and introduce them to community. I usually offer them a free, uh, like feedback on their profile. So you gotta have a kick ass banner, you gotta have a really good tagline, you have to have a good about section, you have to have a good featured section, you have to have a good CTA on the top, a custom button, a custom link, um, and so like, what do you have in your banner?

Well, who are you? What do you do? Right? What benefits do you give people? The banner is the equivalent of what’s above the fold on a website, right? The banner is looked at more than anything. So you really have to have a good banner. You want a good profile picture. Uh, you want a really good tagline.

That’s memorable. So mine is the business coach who actually runs a business. People like that, um, you know, draws their attention. Um, and it’s true. So, um, I like having something memorable in a tagline. Because it’s like any other social media page, right? Like who are you? What do you do? How do you help people?

Uh, and you have you have more opportunity on linkedin because there’s more real estate There’s more things you can put in there Your about section in my opinion really needs to draw people in with a good hook just like your content Um, and then my formula is is very simple on linkedin. I’m very big on t shirts So I have like 200 shirts people always love to see what t shirt is not going to wear next right that became a real thing So I post a selfie every day Try to have a different t shirt and every selfie.

And then my content itself, I kind of developed that own sort of style with the arrows and all that kind of stuff. I don’t use any AI, never have. Um, not that I’m against it. I just don’t use it. Um, I usually stick to a good 150, 200 words on my stuff, but I do have a particular formula that I really tend to follow, which is one, have a real kick ass cook, uh, hook to be able to back up the hook, don’t just write clickbait.

That’s a bad idea. So you really have to have an agenda for what your posts are going to be about. Um, and really sort of drawing the reader, either inspire, educate, scare, make them happy, you know, whatever it might be. Um, you know, some people that I coach and teach, uh, I explained to them, I use a format called HSSRC, which is hook story solution results, CTA.

And, um, you know, draw them in with a hook, tell them the story. Where’s the pain? What’s the solution? What results will come of that solution? And then how do they reach it? You know, that, that’s kind of a standard thing that I would just tell everybody. And I have like a, you know, we did a webinar that’s on YouTube that anyone could take a look at if they wanted to just like a 45 minute primer on really sort of like how to create a really good profile and what you need to be doing every day on there.

Um, So, you know, just, but here’s something that I think is really important and very telling, right? Because a lot of people, they won’t put in the work and like anything else, you want to grow a good website, you got to put in the work. You want to grow a good social media profile organically. I’m not talking about paid.

Organically, you got to put in the work. It takes a long time. Uh, you do see results. It does work. But like, hey man, you got to be engaging with people constantly, leaving comments on posts, saying hello. Like it’s, it’s like anything else. That’s why I can, I very much liken it to, Our days of, you know, late two thousands and growing websites and building relationships, sites like dig, it’s, it’s the same thing.

We’re just in a new era. It’s a new medium. And now you’ve got AI and you’ve got all these things that can help you, you know, some of this, some of the leverage out there. But I think people are using that leverage because I think it’s a replacement when I don’t think it’s, we’re quite there yet. It’s more like it will assist you.

Um, So it’s deliberate. I think the most important thing is I never loved the word side hustle. I like the word side venture a little bit better. You know, it’s more like, hey, if you want to do this well, you got to take it seriously. And we’re talking, you know, hour a day. You know, is that so much to ask? No, if you want to grow any successful business, how could you expect to do it in five minutes a day?

You can’t. Um, so yeah, um, with, it’s interesting because with regards to websites specifically, I’m trying to think of how to tie that in. Um, I think on a, on a platform like a LinkedIn, if you’re running a content based website and you’re doing display advertising, would I necessarily tell you to create a LinkedIn account to draw traffic to that website?

No. Probably not.

Jared: Right.

Nat: Probably not. But if you were running a business and you had a website that had a product or service and you wanted to draw views to that website, yeah, I’d tell you to have a personal brand on LinkedIn for sure. Um, I think having a brand on LinkedIn is great. Just, just to have one, it can present you with opportunities that you probably never had before.

Um, but that’s a bit of a stretch to be like, Hey, I’m trying to get a million views a month. You can’t just drive that from LinkedIn. I suppose maybe you could, but, um, I just want to be very realistic in terms of the audience that’s likely listening here and, um, you know, growing a niche website, you really have to know what the purpose of that website is.

An affiliate site? Yeah, maybe. Maybe that would work, right? That’s different. Um, if you’re pushing products, It’s different, right? So it’s funny. There are, there are people like, like dog walkers on LinkedIn, right? Like, like plumbers are on LinkedIn and it sounds funny, right? And it is kind of, but here’s the funny thing about that.

How many people on LinkedIn have a dog? How many people on LinkedIn in New York have a dog, right? And so there’s targeting. You can go into sales navigator and find every person on LinkedIn in New York. And so why not promote a dog walking service on a LinkedIn? And that’s a big, and what I’m talking about is a huge stretch from the conventional stuff that’s on LinkedIn, which is more like coaching financial services, you know, recruiting, you know, all that kind of stuff.

But I find there to be so much opportunity because in my line of work, it’s like. I don’t care where you have a personal brand. I’m not industry agnostic. I could say I specialize in branding for lawyers. I could say that and there’d probably be a big enough audience, but. Um, I just chose to, to not do that, right?

And there’s a lot of flexibilities, billion users on there. There’s really more like 350 million active ones, but yeah, over a billion users on the platform. It’s a lot.

Jared: What would you say to people who, and I hear this a lot, not just for LinkedIn, for the record, uh, Pick your platform, but they’ll say, I missed it, right?

I missed the chance. You even alluded to it a bit. You’re like, ah, I got in 2019 and I missed the really good years, but I still got some of the good you, you know, there’s, um, there is a constant feeling like if I wasn’t there at the beginning, it’s harder now, why should I bother? And I’m sure you run into that a lot with people who are asking about LinkedIn and how to grow and how to, how to scale and whatnot, and then looking at when you initially got on the platform, like, what would you say to people like that?

And how relevant do you think that is?

Nat: Yeah. Well, the funny thing is, is, um, I was at 30, 000 in 2023, so you’re looking at 53, 000, you know, 51, 000 growth when I really, you know, put my foot on the gas. Um, do I think one can grow at that level today? No, but you can still make a really big dent. Um, if you really want to grow your account just join one of those annoying cohorts for you know 5, 000 and just freaking grow all your shit artificially You know join like a like a pod or an engagement group and you’ll you’ll get all that I guess it’s fake engagement, whatever it is, but, um, that I certainly wouldn’t be recommending to anyone listening.

But, if you start something from zero, now, here’s another thing you have to take into consideration as well. Depends on what you’re doing, right? Like, you don’t need 100, 000 followers. I’m not sitting here on this call saying, we have so many people in our community where I’m like, Dude, if you’re going after followers, you’re doing the wrong thing.

You’re going after business. You’re going after relationships. So the types of content that you create and people that you’re engaging with every day really matters If you just want to go after a million followers I probably wouldn’t recommend it. I’d say go on tiktok go on instagram go somewhere else If you’re looking to build a business and you’re selling a high ticket product linkedin is awesome And you do not need a crazy following Um, I’ve typically seen that when you’re sort of at that 5, 000 follower mark, which should not take an obscenely long time to reach if you’re doing it right, uh, that’s when you can really start seeing some, some traction, uh, with regard to those relationships and with regard to, to sales and things like that.

So, um, I do think it’s a great time to get in. I think. People are really pushing this video feed a lot, which has been like insane. Um, I still don’t post video. Uh, I grew up posting video on LinkedIn. That’s all I posted. But today I think they’re still figuring it out. This whole TikTok style feed. I mean, if TikTok goes away in the US, I don’t know what’s going to happen with LinkedIn’s video feed.

Maybe people will flock there. Um, I just think right now they’re sort of pushing it a lot. So a lot of these views are tend to be very high and I don’t know how much Substance there is behind them. I think that’s just them trying to figure it still figure things out, uh, algorithmically. But, um, look, man, I’m, I’m someone who’s doing this with selfies and text.

And, um, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think the opportunity was there, but something that. I think it always holds true is there’ll be another something out there.

Jared: Yep. There just

Nat: will look what happened to blue sky during the election, right? Like, like people just flocked over to blue sky and that just became big.

And I don’t know what its growth is today. If it’s still, if it’s still going, but I put myself on there just because. I was like, holy shit, maybe this is the next wave. Who knows? You know, and if tick tock goes, what’s going to happen? There’ll be another one. Um, and I’m not saying like, I don’t think there’s, I don’t think the opportunity is dead on a LinkedIn at all.

It’s not even close. And I’m talking organic specifically. Right. And their ad, their ad program is, is pretty robust as well. So you can even just do paid on there too, if you wanted. Um, but yeah, man, to that, I just say like there’s. There’s always going to be something. There really is. Um, but I don’t think I never got on any platform at the right time.

I never did. Yeah, I didn’t. There was always someone there. There was always someone like even Dig, like I just said, there was like Mr. Babyman, like he was the king, right? Like, but, and, uh, so LinkedIn, I didn’t get in that, like, you know. The perfect time. But I did get in, I will say at a very good time.

There’s no question.

Jared: You, you alluded to hate, uh, organic speaking, like, and again, you, you, you painted a nice picture about how it’s really not about followers. It’s about business, but circling back to getting followers, getting engagement. You said, Hey, 5, 000. That’s pretty easy to do these days and you can see where things are at brass tacks, high level.

What does getting to 5, 000 look like? I mean, I know you talked about posting consistent content, engaging in comments. Uh, what other tactics would you do if you had to get an account to 5, 000 organic and engaged, you know, followers?

Nat: Sure. Uh, I’d be hitting the connect button every single day. Right. So back in 2019, I was able to hit that button almost an unlimited amount of times per day.

But today, in my opinion, you need to be way more intentional. So if it was me, I would be trying to connect with people who are likely potential buyers of whatever it is I might be selling or like minded or people who were just really responsive, great at engagement, things like that. So today, if you’re on LinkedIn premium, you can only do a hundred a week, can only request a hundred a week.

If you’re on LinkedIn sales navigator, you can request two 50. You can hit that connect button 250 times. So that right there, let’s say by doing math, you’re reaching out to a hundred a week to connect. And let’s say 20, connect with you. What happens is those 20, They’re now in your first circle of connections, which means they will then be exposed to your content in the feed.

It will be pushed to them, most likely. And that’s how their algorithm works. Look, nobody knows how any fricking algorithm really works. But, the theory is that LinkedIn’s algorithm, which makes sense, works. They push your shit out eventually, you know, to a certain amount of first level connections. If they like it, they then push it out to another level and very similar to like a TikTok or YouTube.

Um, so you’re actually helping, you know, you’re Positioning yourself better in the algorithm just by having more connections to start with. So you definitely want to hit that connect button. Um, I think you need to be producing content consistently. I do it every day, but I think five days a week is ideal.

Some people do three. There’s some very big users that do three, but I don’t know how much that would play anymore. I think that’s probably a little bit harder today. Um, and I’d be engaging consistently 30 to 45 minutes every day. Uh, you know, reaching out to a good 20, you know, 10, 20 new people, maybe more than that, uh, and always making sure to respond to your stuff.

If people are commenting on yours, show them the respect of acknowledging that you know, you got a content, a comment from them, you know, um, and, and reaching back with something good to say. Uh, you do that. Eventually you get to a point probably, you know, in a good three months or so where you can start seeing.

20 followers a day, right? 15, 20 followers a day and eventually more. Um, I typically see about a hundred every day, but LinkedIn is usually, uh, always cleaning out their system. So I actually lose a lot of followers for people that aren’t active, which is actually a good thing, which is why I don’t necessarily focus on that overall big number anymore.

Um, back in. Back in different, you know, during my peak or whatever of 2023, I was probably getting two to 250 a day, you know, so that has slowed a little bit, but you know what? My business is doing better. So those users are more targeted now. So I don’t give a shit. Um, it’s not a vanity metrics thing. And if you’re focused solely on that, that’s your right.

But again, I would ask, you know, there’s a, there’s an account that on LinkedIn that I call an empty account. You know, there’s a lot of people who have 100, 000 followers, 200, 000 followers. And to that I say, okay, what kind of business are you running? How are you actually doing? Is that translating into revenue?

And if it’s not, that’s okay, but if that’s your goal, it’s not okay, right? So, um, it’s funny the way I’m approaching LinkedIn now is very much how I would approach it if I had zero followers, which is with intention, um, with the mindset of, I want to really only be connecting with quality people every day.

And for that, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll usually kind of, I’ll try and clean out who I’m engaging with, you know, or at least monitor that every couple of months or whatever, just to see like, cause what people running, here’s where people run into a really bad trap on LinkedIn. And I’ve run into it myself, especially given my, my volume of comments.

Sometimes you find yourself engaging with the exact same people every single day and you do it for months on end. And then what happens? You burn out. Of course you’re going to burn out. If I’m freaking responding to 400 of the same comments every single day and I’m commenting on the same accounts every single day.

Now how I do all that stuff and find new people and all that crap, that’s like, that’s a whole nother conversation. But the point is, like, you can run into some serious walls, uh, and some dead ends on LinkedIn. And any other social media platform for that matter. Look, if you’re on Instagram and you’re commenting on the same 100 creators every day, you’re not going to get anywhere.

It’s not going to happen. Eventually you run into that wall. And so, um, obviously I could talk about this for days. So I don’t want to go on and on about it, but bottom line, yes, the opportunities is certainly there. In my opinion, there’s no question.

Jared: I I’m gonna go to my next question. I would I’d like to ask you more about that, but I want to make sure I get this question.

And, um, it’s certainly as I’ve been thinking while we have our conversation here. I think this is my biggest roadblock if I were to want to go down that linked in road and it’s how to come up with good topics every day. Or how to come up with good content to publish, whether it’s every day or five days a week or three days a week.

Like, um, and I’m not saying that’s everyone’s biggest thing, but it’s certainly got to be in the back of everyone’s mind to some degree. Like, where am I going to come up with all these ideas? Um, if we’re looking back at the website game, like we had keyword research tools or we had, uh, it was a little bit different, I guess I’ll say, how do you come up with content ideas?

How do you come up with topics that resonate any tips you can share for people?

Nat: Sure. Um, one thing I’ll say is that that put me at a bit of an advantage is that I was in the website game and I was creating content every single day. So I kind of built that muscle of you remember when listicles weren’t even that popular, right?

And so one of my websites was, uh, unreality mag, which still exists. It was a lot of film, TV, video games. I was doing a lot of stuff, listicles, before listicles were huge. Not to say I started on listicles by no means, but I would, I would go very far outside of just a conventional listicle. So like, whenever I would see like 20 best movies of the 80s, I would take it a step further and think to myself, all right, uh, what about, you know, the 20 best soundtracks from 80s movies?

And let’s take it a step further. 20 best soundtracks from horror movies from the 80s movies. Okay, let’s take it a step further. Best uses of songs in horror movies in the 80s. And I just kind of built up that muscle. Now, what I would recommend to someone on LinkedIn is, is pretty, is very, very, um, top level, pretty simple.

Um, what you need to understand is, here’s a great way to start. Let’s say you have a product or service. Think of five pain points that you’re trying to address. You got five articles right there. Within those five articles, you got another 50 most likely, right? So whatever you used for a hook, you can do the same article with a different hook.

Same article with a different angle. Let’s say you bring up five points in an article. That supports one of your big pillars, right? You can do a whole article on just one of those points. So the way I recommend the way I say what I say to every creator who’s brand new is once you have 20 articles, you have content for a lifetime because then it’s just testing right.

What’s doing well. Okay. So let me take a piece of that article and write a whole article on that piece. Let me take a piece of article piece of that article and write a whole article on that piece. Then you’re just, you’re just growing branches, right? It’s, it’s. It becomes much easier. I’m not saying it’s just some easy thing, but typically I have people fill out what I call is like this avatar, you know, worksheet or like a, like a pain point worksheet, um, just to, just to put it down on paper and make it a little bit easier.

But if you know your main sort of pillars, You start there just like you would like. This is what I was telling you. Look how similar this is to content on websites. It’s like playing out your

Jared: kind of topical map for your website before you your first time, right? And you see what worked and then you go double down and triple down on what’s working.

You figure out article titles, you figure out kind of topics within a topic. And I mean, yes, it does sound so similar. You just

Nat: said is precisely in my opinion, how you create content. On a social media platform. It’s the same words. Remember the word pillars? Like that’s the first thing I read about SEO is like build your pillars, right?

And in this, it’s like build your pain points. Um, and just like you said, think, think about this. Here’s a perfect analogy, right? If you’re going deep, if you’re going deep on an article topic, what are you doing? You’re just creating a long tail keyword. That’s all you’re doing. You’re writing an article on a long tail keyword.

So instead of me writing an article on like. I love motivation, right? Like, because motivational topics tend to do well on LinkedIn. Well, if you really want to target someone specific, you could say, what motivates lawyers in New York City, right? Like that’s a, that’s a very specific, now that’s more like Google ads, but still on a LinkedIn, you know, in terms of long tail and your specific target, Let’s say you’re a ghost writer, right?

Which is a big thing on LinkedIn, but you know, if you want to get real specific, you talk about the pain points of a specific client and you’re going deep, right? And that’s, you know, and I tend to mix it up. You know, sometimes I go very general with things that I think will resonate with a lot of people.

And sometimes I’ll say, you’re a financial advisor. You’re upset because you’re not getting any clients. You live in New York, right? And like that, what is that? All that is is is a, that’s a local SEO article, right? Yeah. Like when you, when you, when you, when you use the analogy, that’s all that is, it’s a local long tail keyword, location based SEO article.

That’s all it is. And so, um, the nice thing about algorithms is that they tend to, and it doesn’t always work right, but usually they’ll push ’em to those demos to the best. That you can’t like every time i’ve written the word, you know financial advisor i’ll get financial advisors, you know commenting my stuff You know that unfortunately, that’s a leap of faith.

You kind of have to trust the algorithm to push it up properly But I can tell you this right now with Almost 100 percent certainty. If you are posting financial services or related content for long enough on LinkedIn, and you were reaching out to the right people who were in financial services, your feed is going to be flooded with that.

And those are the people that are going to be responding to you. Just like if you were to post only stuff about, you know, Italian restaurants in New York city, and you had a website that only focused on that. Ideally, the search algorithms are, that’s, that’s where you’re going to rank, right? Is those areas.

So I hope that

Jared: might be the best part of the podcast right there. We’ll have to see, which is, which is good timing because we’re kind of hitting the end here. Uh, spend the last bit and tell us about who you’re targeting, who is a good fit for brand built, what in terms of what you guys are targeting is the right kind of person, or at least a type of people that end up, uh, in your community.

Nat: Yeah. Um, So around 85 percent of our community is comprised of entrepreneurs, business owners, founders, right? The other 15 is people in corporate, which is surprising. You know, unfortunately, a lot of corporations are not thrilled about people having personal brands. They’re still not quite there yet. Um, but that, that is why we have a good 15 percent or so that are in corporate.

Um, anyone who’s really looking to grow business, because it’s not, we don’t just teach LinkedIn, obviously, this is a branding and business community. So there’s a lot of networking done, um, tons of, you know, business calls, uh, scaling your business, things like that. So anyone who’s really looking to grow a business, whether it’s an existing one or starting one, um, and they’re having trouble, anyone who finds themselves to be lonely in a business, One of the main reasons we started this Our tagline originally was entrepreneurship can be really lonely.

That was initially our tagline. I think that’s a pervasive problem in the world, especially now that we have so many more entrepreneurs, people starting a business, you’d be surprised how debilitating it is and how lonely people feel. So I think that’s a very big one right there. Um, but again, I don’t think we are limited to any type of industry.

Um, if you’re growing a business, you’re looking to scale, you’re looking to leverage a brand to grow that business and network, then it’s probably worth looking into, um, for, for a group like ours.

Jared: Well, this has been a great interview. Um, I’ve learned a ton. I appreciate you coming on and being our first of 2025.

Uh, let’s close out, tell people where they can follow along with you. I I’m going to guess LinkedIn should probably be mentioned here, but you tell me where, where do you want people to follow along with you on? There’s

Nat: a number of places. So, um, So LinkedIn, if you just look up Nat Berman, you’ll probably find me on there.

Uh, you can either connect with me or just follow my content. Um, Brand Built’s website is JoinBrandBuilt. So it’s Well, all one word, join brand built. com. Um, I think we’re else, you know, I have a website, Nat Berman. com that exists. Um, outside of there. Yeah. I mean, I’m on every like social platform, whatever, but, uh, I think that’s a, I think that’s enough.

Jared: That’s where you’re active. Fair enough. Well, Nat, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for sharing so many good things. Um, until we talk again next time.

Nat: Thanks a lot, Jerry. I appreciate it.

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