Get on LinkedIn to Get Off LinkedIn

In early 2024, I wrote a post about a specific milestone alongside what my LinkedIn strategy actually looked like behind the scenes. Posting four times a week. Spending an hour on the platform max. Never going viral. No massive follower count, no viral moments, no algorithm hacks.

And yet the business was growing.

As I was writing it, I typed something that two years later is now my tagline: I'm on LinkedIn to get off LinkedIn.

In that moment I realized that was it. That one sentence captured everything I'd been doing differently and why it was working.

The advice isn't wrong. It's just not for you.

So much of the LinkedIn advice out there right now is built for content creators and influencers. And it's not bad advice. If your business model is your audience, then yes, post daily, optimize for reach, chase the algorithm, grow the following. That makes sense.

But founder, that's not your business model. Your business doesn't run on impressions. It runs on relationships, conversations, and trust.

When business owners try to follow the content creator playbook, one of two things happens. They burn out trying to keep up with a content schedule that was never designed for someone also running a business. Or they post consistently, get decent engagement, and still wonder why none of it is converting. They've optimized for the wrong thing.

A fundamentally different game.

A content creator's goal is to grow an audience. A business owner's goal is to grow a business. Those two things can overlap, but they aren't the same, and treating them as if they are is where many go wrong.

When you approach LinkedIn as a business owner, content becomes a tool, not a product. You're using visibility to start conversations, build trust, and open doors. The content is the introduction and the relationship is the point.

This is why I've never needed to go viral. A post with a few hundred impressions that reaches the right three people is worth more to my business than a post with 50,000 impressions that reaches nobody who would ever hire me. Reach without relevance just fills your ego, not your bank account.

What getting off LinkedIn actually looks like.

When I say get on LinkedIn to get off LinkedIn, I don't mean disappear. I mean build a presence sustainable enough that you can go do the real work, serve your clients, show up in the right rooms, have real conversations, and then come back and talk about it.

I shared an example of this in my newsletter recently. In one week, I got tagged in six different posts for six completely different reasons, a client win, a $100k shoutout, a magazine feature, a book chapter, a thought leadership quote, and a cohort member telling her audience why the program works. Six moments, one week, and I didn't ask for a single one of them.

The thread running through all of it: LinkedIn is where those relationships started or deepened, but the magic happened off the platform, in DMs, on calls, in real work together.

The people who build the most from this platform aren't living on it. They post intentionally, follow up in the DMs, show up in communities, and treat every conversation as a relationship worth nurturing.

What to actually optimize for.

You're not optimizing for follower counts, impressions or going viral.

You're sharing social proof from real clients. Recommendations from people you've actually worked with. Earned media and speaking opportunities that other people invited you into. And most powerfully, other people talking about you when you're not in the room.

That's what compounds. That's what builds a reputation. And none of it requires you to become a content creator. It just requires you to show up as a business owner who understands what LinkedIn was actually built for: relationships.

Get on it with that intention. Then go do the work it opens the door to.

P.S. Hear it best from Mel, who said after working together: "I followed the formula and got on LinkedIn to get off LinkedIn," and walked away with several new clients in just 4 months (10x'd her investment from just one client!) plus a board position to go with it.