In 2024, I was sitting in a cafe in Palo Alto with my mentor, Steve.
I was in a weird chapter of my life. My first company had failed and I was working alone in "pivot hell." I was spending my weeks cold calling chemical distributors and people working in US defense, trying to find pain points I could build products around.
And on my weekends, I'd been doing this... LinkedIn thing. Writing posts, making infographics.
Steve asked me what I was working on, and after talking about the "real businesses", I sheepishly mentioned the LinkedIn stuff. After chatting about it for a while, he looked at me and said something like "hey, you clearly have a talent for this. Why don't you explore how you can actually use it?"
Before that conversation, I hadn't really acknowledged that anything using social media could be a real career direction. I was still looking for a "serious" business idea.
I would have just continued cold calling Chemical Distributors who didn’t really want to talk to me.
In my head, serious people didn't spend their time working on social media. That was just for rich people and snake oil salesmen.
But the truth is, I was good at it. I'd built a following pretty quickly. I spent every waking minute of my weekends thinking about it.
But I pushed that feeling down. I wouldn't acknowledge it because it didn't feel like a “real” business.
That conversation felt like the first time I gave myself permission to look for businesses that take advantage of my LinkedIn brand.
After that, I started exploring businesses in career development because that's what I initially built my personal brand around. That exploration eventually led me to creator tools and building Saywhat. Today, that business alone is doing more than $600,000 in revenue.
I was lucky to get that slap in the face from Steve. Many of us don't. We ignore what we're drawn to, what we're clearly good at because it doesn't look like what we think success is supposed to look like.
Maybe it's comedy. Maybe it's building shopify stores. Maybe it's social media, like it was for me.
I could have spent years stuck in that limbo. I know many people that do.
They push down their skills until they wither away and vanish.
Don't let that be you. Give yourself permission to follow your gut.
See you next week,
Will
P.S.
A new format you can try this week: Here (1,572 likes). Apply it to your niche’s tools.
Will McTighe
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P.P.S. Building a personal brand was the highest leverage thing I’ve done in my career. Whenever you’re ready, there are three ways I can help you:
Enterprise LinkedIn Systems – I work with enterprise clients ($10M+ in revenue or Series A+) on building and running your entire LinkedIn content-led GTM system. If this is you, apply here.
Trying out Saywhat: My software platform and community for solopreneurs, consultants and coaches.
Cheat Sheets (Worth $200): Here are my 60+ LinkedIn Cheat Sheets.
