Transcript

Turning Invisibility into Influence - Finn McKenty

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 44 min · 10,203 words · 105 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Turning Invisibility into Influence - Finn McKenty", an episode of The Proven Podcast published August 7, 2025 (44 min, about 10,203 words). It mentions 29 people, works and ideas, including Product design, personal branding, Wall Street Journal, Proven Podcast, Finn McKente.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Balance, Finn McKente, Nintendo, Product design
  2. – 15:00: personal branding, Product design
  3. – 20:00: Google Ventures, Greylock, Product design, Social Capital
  4. – 25:00: Wall Street Journal, First moment of truth, Inch wide, mile deep, personal branding
  5. – 30:00: OPT (Other People's Time)
  6. – 35:00: Adam Robinson, retention.com
  7. – 40:00: Kansas
  8. – 43:32: Apple Notes, finnmcky.com

Notable quotes from "Turning Invisibility into Influence - Finn McKenty"

  • Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone says you can't change your brand without losing your audience. Finn McKente proves them.
    about Proven Podcast · at
  • My career that I thought was pretty cool. I my day job, so to speak, is product design and marketing. I started out in kind of the agency world. Did some stuff for like Nike…
    about Product design · at
  • And positioning and stuff like that. But the thing I've landed on which I'm getting a lot of traction on is personal branding for entrepreneurs especially like sort of I would…
    about personal branding · at
  • Million or something like that from some very top-notch investors like Greylock and Social Capital and Google Ventures and stuff like that which you know to be clear I didn't…
    about Google Ventures · at
  • The minute the book became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, I don't even get introduced by my name anymore. like Wall Street Journal best seller and I have to walk out like Charles. It just becomes.
    about Wall Street Journal · at
  • If you want to sit there and you want to pivot yourself and you want to say less an inch wide, mile deep and you want to be stand out as a differentiator with that 1% as you…
    about Inch wide, mile deep · at
  • And that's basically what Proctor and Gamble would call the first moment of truth. Meaning that when you see Tide on the shelf, you have about in within 3 seconds the consumer has basically decided whether they want to buy it or.
    about First moment of truth · at
  • It really is. Just get it done. I my favorite tool would be OPT.
    about OPT (Other People's Time) · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Finn McKente — Person · 1 mention · first at
    What you can prove. Everyone says you can't change your brand without losing your audience. Finn McKente proves them dead wrong. He built over 1 million followers talking about…
  • Adam Robinson — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Five discovery calls in like a day from one comment I left. There's a guy named Adam Robinson who's the CEO of retention.com. if you're on LinkedIn, you might have seen him. He…

Companies & orgs

  • Wall Street Journal — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Proven Podcast — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Nintendo — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Marketing. I started out in kind of the agency world. Did some stuff for like Nike and Nintendo and Red Bull back in the day, which I was wildly unqualified for and I did…
  • Red Bull — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Marketing. I started out in kind of the agency world. Did some stuff for like Nike and Nintendo and Red Bull back in the day, which I was wildly unqualified for and I did…
  • Google Ventures — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Greylock — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Million or something like that from some very top-notch investors like Greylock and Social Capital and Google Ventures and stuff like that which you know to be clear I didn't…
  • Social Capital — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Million or something like that from some very top-notch investors like Greylock and Social Capital and Google Ventures and stuff like that which you know to be clear I didn't…
  • retention.com — Company · 1 mention · first at
    One comment I left. There's a guy named Adam Robinson who's the CEO of retention.com. if you're on LinkedIn, you might have seen him. He mentioned that he was looking for…
  • finnmcky.com — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Finnmcky.com is my website, which you can look at if you want. but I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place to look me up. So, just look me up on there. F I N C N T Y. And always.
  • Abercrombie & Fitch — Company · 1 mention
  • Canva — Company · 1 mention
  • CreativeLive — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Balance — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Thing I worked at a agency that did a lot of stuff for Proctor and Gamble like Tide and Freze and Swiffer and Balance and stuff like that which actually ended up being way more…
  • Swiffer — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Thing I worked at a agency that did a lot of stuff for Proctor and Gamble like Tide and Freze and Swiffer and Balance and stuff like that which actually ended up being way more…
  • Apple Notes — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Productive people. The most productive people I know all use the dumbest, most basic [ __ ] like Apple Notes, and [ __ ] Gmail and like I don't know. I'm just not the person to…
  • NetObjects — Product · 1 mention
  • Tide — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Kansas — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Know that you didn't just copy and paste it. literally anything like if they're from Kansas, you be Hey, I was in Witchah last summer. It was really hot.
  • Wichita — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone says you can't change your brand without losing your audience. Finn McKente proves them dead wrong. He built over 1 million followers talking about music, then flipped his entire audience to business consulting without losing a single customer. Today, he shows you exactly how to rebrand at any scale, without starting over. The show starts now. All right, welcome back. Today we're with someone who is pivoting his entire market and what he's known for and retaking control of his audience. I'm really excited to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to get into it.

So, you've done something and I saw one of your posts that you did on YouTube recently and we'll do the preamble. We tell everybody who you are and all that. So, they know that now. Two months ago, you said, "You know what? This isn't my my truth anymore. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm being forced to talk about rock and roll and not about what I actually do, which is, you know, my business and how I scale things and all of that. And being able to retake control of your audience is something that most people have a hard time doing, especially when you're in a situation where tonight's the debate. By the time people see this, it'll already be done, where people aren't happy with what they have, but they're forced to be stuck in this environment. Do me a favor, tell everybody a little bit more of how you got where you are and what kind of your next steps are.

I will do that in a second. The first thing I want to do is say that, you know, unless someone literally has a gun to your head, you're not forced to do anything. It's all a choice. And that's step number one is to to believe that all of this is a choice and you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want as long as you have a plan and you're willing to do it. So, to answer your question, um I started out YouTube in 2017, in September of 2017, so almost exactly 7 years ago. And my goal there was basically just to build my personal brand. And I wanted people to know who I was because I had done a lot of stuff in my career that I thought was pretty cool. I mean, I I my my day job, you know, so to speak, is product design and marketing. I started out in kind of the agency world. Did some stuff for like Nike and Nintendo and Red Bull back in the day, which I was wildly unqualified for and I did terrible work for them,

but, you know, I got some big names, you know, in my portfolio, which is sort of the first step to climbing the ladder there. moved on. Did a lot of other agency work like primarily the main thing I I worked at a agency that did a lot of stuff for Proctor and Gamble like Tide and Freze and Swiffer and Balance and stuff like that which actually ended up being way more interesting than I thought it would be. Uh I was also a designer and marketer at Abbercrombie and Fitch. Um, so I'd done a lot, but like nobody gave a [ __ ] you know, because it's like you can tell people all this stuff, they're like, "Oh, that's nice.

They don't care, right? They don't care." And and it didn't feel good. And I felt kind of invisible and I felt like

I felt like I was an outsider looking in on the world because, you know, even though I had done this stuff that I thought was cool and I knew that I was good at my job, for whatever reason, people just didn't care. And I said, "All right, well, I've got to do something to make people care about me." Because I didn't want to be one of these people sitting on the sidelines complaining, you know, that the world was passing me by. I was like, "Well, I'm going to [ __ ] figure this out." So, I started the YouTube channel because I sort of knew that at the time that's where attention was. I had done blogging and stuff like that before, but that had, you know, died in the 2010s and I said, "Okay, YouTube's the thing, so I'm going to be there." I started out talking about business, which I would say is the thing I'm most interested in.

Um, and I did probably, I don't know, 50 videos or something like that about business. And again, nobody cared, which, you know, to some extent that's part of the deal on YouTube. You know, when you start out, you're going to get 50 views. That's kind of how it is. But I was really just not getting any kind of traction there. And I was like, I I I I think I need to pivot. That's always sort of a question you needing to ask yourself. You know, you've seen that meme of the the minor, you know, like digging towards the diamond and they both quit. One guy's an inch away, you know, whatever. You never really know which one of those two minors you are.

But I said, I think I need to pivot. And I had written about music and stuff before. So I and I had a decent sized audience from that. You know, I had blogs that I don't know, maybe in their peak were getting hundreds of thousands of unique viewers a month, which is pretty decent. So, uh, I kind of knew how to talk about that and I said, I'm just going to completely pivot and talk about music. And even though not necessarily the thing I was super interested in at that point in my life, but I knew there was an audience for it.

And again, my goal was just to make people know who I was. And that's the reason why I said my name at the at the beginning of every video for like the first 6 years. I stopped doing that recently, but I said my name there because I wanted people to literally know my name and face. And I did that. You know, it'sund I have like 120 or 130,000 or sorry 120 or 130 million views now. So there's like literally tens of millions of people that know my name and face, which is the reason why I did this. I also made a lot more money from it than I anticipated that I would.

I I didn't really think I would make any and I made a lot. Um and so now I'm sort of at the point you mentioned where is I sort of I did what I came to do with it. Um my audience wants, you know, which is fine. This is the nature of any sort of media platform. The audience has expectations, but the thing they want to hear about is kind of not something I really want to talk about. And I've achieved what I wanted to achieve with it. So I think it's time to move on. So that that move on step is it hard because I mean you were trying to fill a certain cup which was I want to be seen.

I want to be known. I don't want to be invisible anymore. That cup's been full. You you've done that. You've got you know millions and millions of people at least at the very minimum know your name and what your face looks like.

You're now in the process of pivoting away which means you're the process of abandoning kind of that audience and doing that. How have you struggled through that? Because a lot of people do this where like hey I'm going this way. It's not working for me or it is working but it's not going to get me to that next level. kind of the Tarzan effect where you're kind of swinging vine to vine, but you hold on to one and you mean you got to let go of another one. That's kind of where you are at this one. If not, you you lose momentum.

When you had to make that decision, what were the steps that you went through that you're like, you know what, screw it. If I walk away from this, I I need to do this and honor my authentic truth. What was that walkthrough process? How long did it take you? What are the questions you kind of asked yourself as you went through that? Well, I laid the foundation for this starting a few years ago because I knew this like I never wanted to be like a, you know, a person who talked about music on YouTube forever. So, I I didn't know whether that was going to last 3 years or 5 years or 10 years or what the what the the number would be, but I knew that it was going to come at some time. Um, and I knew that I would want to focus on business because I like that's the thing I'm most interested in. And so, um, one specific tactical thing that I did from the very beginning is I included a link to my LinkedIn in the description of

every video. Um, even though I wasn't really very active on there, I just figured, you know, I'm going to get some amount of passive traffic there and why not build my followers even if I'm not doing anything with it yet because I know that I'm going to someday. So, that's like thing number one is like build the bridge before you need it. Ideally, don't wait until you have that like holy [ __ ] moment. you you build it before you need it. So, I started doing that from the very beginning. So, I built I don't know, I probably got seven or eight thousand followers on LinkedIn or something from that. Um, which isn't like huge, but that's pretty decent. And even if we assume that like most of those are not really like my target audience, still like it's still seven or eight,000 people that I got

absolutely with literally zero effort. Um, and then in 2021, I think I started posting on LinkedIn. I would say infrequently, but you know, I was getting a little bit more active there. Again, just like if I was building the the scaffolding around the bridge, you know, from the beginning, now I was sort of like slowly on the weekends showing up with a little bit of lumber here and there and sort of piecing it together again because I knew this was going to happen eventually. And so I decided um Yeah, go ahead.

No, I was I was asking is you've thought you thought about this years and years and years ago. Yeah. When did you decide to pull the trigger that that because that's you we've all talked about this and you know when I built my gram account I was like all right I know I'm going to do something with this someday I don't know what it's gonna be right

so having not having that clarity what were your steps where you got into the clarity and what is it that you do want to do in the business environment because you've worked with huge brands you've obviously clearly been successful in your quote unquote day job

what is it that you're you want to do and what is the value you want to bring to the market

well let me let me answer there's a few questions in there and let me answer them sort of in order because I I want to you know if there's anybody else listening to this I want to give them some very actionable steps for this. So from the very beginning I sort of knew a number that I wanted to get to that like if I hit this number in terms of the amount of money that I have invested then I think I'm probably okay to make the leap. Um, and so I I had that number in mind. And I hit that around like November or December of last year and I was like, "Okay, I think that means I'm okay to do this." And I have a friend who's also a financial planner.

And so I called him and I screen shared everything. And I was like, "This is what I got going on. Here's what I think I want to do. Like, am I am I clear to proceed, boss?" And he's like, "Yeah, man. You can quit tomorrow if you want to." So I got the blessing of you know and and of my wife of course but I got the blessing of you know financial planner. So I sort of again I had the exit plan from the very beginning um or something close to it. So yeah I hit that and then once I had sort of made that decision and and I still you know for anybody who's watching this now like I still have these active YouTube channels. I haven't like stopped yet but I'm I'm going to probably around September I think. So in November, I started revamping my LinkedIn. Again, like to to sort of go back to the metaphor of building the bridge before you need it, I started revamping my LinkedIn. Uh I have some smart friends

who, you know, helped me kind of talk, you know, walk through all the exercises of optimizing my portfolio and repositioning myself and, you know, all those nitty-gritty details about your, you know, headline and your about and all that stuff, which I'd be happy to talk to because I think these are super important. Um, but they helped me work through all that. I'd probably gone through like

eight iterations of that, you know, over like three months or something like that before I landed on what I have now. Um, and so then I started getting more active on LinkedIn again, you know, just sort of building this thing before I need it. And I'm not making enough to pay the bills. And so to answer your other question of like what value I want to provide. So what I I I I sort of experimented with a few different offers and positioning and stuff like that. But the thing I've landed on which I'm getting a lot of traction on is personal branding for entrepreneurs especially like sort of I would say unconventional entrepreneurs. Although I suppose all of them are kind of unconventional by nature but that's what we're landing on.

So if you want to if you're an entrepreneur and you want to grow on YouTube or LinkedIn I can help you do that. And I've been I probably had 30 clients or something this year which you know for my first six months in business I feel pretty [ __ ] good about that.

That's really really good. So, so when you talk about rebranding on LinkedIn, it's a huge pivot for most people, especially as entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs instinctively most entrepreneurs are so driven in a certain way that they forget these other details that matter as well. It just it just is what it is. We are all over the place and we will jump from one project to another project to another because I grew up as a dork. I played baseball and then I was a swimming dork and then I became an IT dork and then from it I got into scaling businesses and personal growth and you know all these things is just constant iteration. So we don't over know like hey how do we actually show up what is the best way and you talked about you had eight iterations on LinkedIn if someone's trying to kind of redesign and redevelop and rebrand themsel which you're helping people do you got to start obviously on LinkedIn because

that's where we all live that's that's the playground right now that's our watering hole

what are some of the first things that you want to do as you walk into that going [ __ ] I don't because I remember I abandoned my LinkedIn years ago because I have an IT background I was like I don't want anybody to know who I am in any way shape or form this is all going to be get really ugly I'm just like I'm not touching And now all of a sudden 20 something years later I'm like crap. It is what it is. Um I go out and you know I remember seeing the bands you talk about on your YouTube. I'm like I've seen them laugh and I've seen them laugh and I seen I'm like [ __ ] I'm getting old. Um going in this environment where now we're like okay I need this. This is something that I as I'm rebranding myself and putting myself out there again. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that are just completely unsure on how to do this in an effective manner. And obviously we need to do it on LinkedIn.

What are some of the first steps? you walk in and you you talk about your headline, you talked about your about us, what are the things that other than the basics, like you need a good picture, please look at the camera. Other than those basic things, what are some of the things that you've walked into like, you know, this has obviously been huge. This has been helpful because if you've already gotten 30ome clients in 6 months, it's a huge takeoff. That's a really really good.

Yeah, it's not bad. Um, so th this is going to be um very this this is going to be very difficult for some of the people listening. It's going to probably make him like, you know, white knuckle a little bit. But what you got to do is focus. You got to be one thing to the world. And that's tough because most of us are multifaceted people. You just rattle off a bunch of things about yourself. There's probably even more things about you that you didn't mention. And any of those could be the way that you present yourself to the world, right? And they're all potentially valid, but you got to pick one because um for for two reasons.

Number one is that people are cognitive misers. Meaning that, you know, if you tell them like, "Oh, I'm a carpenter and a portrait photographer and uh whatever a landscape architect, um they're just their eyes are going to glaze over." And even if you are actually all those things, they're just not going to know what to do with you. People, you want to you want people to instantly know what box to put you in and see the value in that. And that might be like, "Okay, I don't need that." That's okay, too. The goal is to create a very focused position such that your ICP will instantly go, okay, I need that right now. I'm going to call this guy. So, you got to pick that one thing you want to focus on and everything you do is going to revolve around that. Which was tough for me because again, I like I was a very credible graphic designer. Like I did it for like 10 years. I'm a very credible marketer. I'm also a very

credible YouTuber. I don't mean to be up my own ass and like pretend like I'm But there's a lot of entrepreneurs who are like this. Like they're legitimately good at a lot of things,

but you can't be a designer marketer/ YouTuber because nobody knows what to do with that. You got to

And the other thing I think people mess up all the time is they go too high. They're like, I'm a thought leader. Like what the [ __ ] does that mean? What are you What are you talking about? I'm an influencer. What the hell are you talking about? So it's it's the idea of inchwide mile deep. So when you had this idea that you know, you've done some amazing things. You've been a marketer. You've been a YouTuber. you've been a graphic designer. What did you end up locking in on? What is the one you're like, no, this is what I'm going to go with. This is how I'm going to present myself to the world for now because again, as you said before, you you snuck your LinkedIn profile in there because you knew there was going to be a pivot in the future. What do you what did you decide to lock in now on? What was the exact one?

So, the first one was about helping startups with product design and marketing, which I've done before. And like I worked at a like the last one I worked at was called Creative Live. It was uh I think we raised like $60 million or something like that um from some very top-notch investors like Greylock and Social Capital and Google Ventures and stuff like that which you know to be clear I didn't do that. Chase the CEO did but uh you know I was I was present. Uh so uh I got in there when we were like right before we raised our series B and stuck around for like four years or something and I so like I have a lot of experience there. I've been doing product design. And I made my first website in 1995, so I'm like very credible there. And I thought, okay, well, I'll help them with this. Um, but for reasons I can get into if you want to, like I sort of experiment with that a little bit and I did get some

traction, but I was like, you know, this is not the right place for me because like I'm credible there, but I wouldn't say, but there's other people who are more credible. And so what you want to do is find a position for yourself such that you are a one of one or close to it where it is instantly clear that you were in the top. you know, 1% of this thing, whatever it is, because being in the middle 50%, you might as well just be invisible, right?

Exactly. So, I I Go ahead. Like you were talking about before, the ability to stand out. You said you did this cuz I needed to stand out. It It's kind of that same narrative. How do I make sure that I'm not invisible in any way, shape, or form doing that in your LinkedIn as well. So, you started out with one where

I think we both made our first website about the same time. Do you remember something called Net Objects by any chance? this program called Net Object.

Yes. Yes. It was embarrassing, but that actually was the first website I did. It was 95 and I I'm old now. So, I remember when Billboard started having www on it, like quit putting the three W's. What the hell's wrong with you?

Right. So, anyway, wild. So, so going in and standing out, that was your first iteration. How did you realize that, you know what, that's not that's not what it's going to be. I need to be that 1enter. I need to put myself in that environment. How quickly did you realize it? And then how quickly did you change to the next pivot? Yeah, probably like I would say I experimented with that for like a month or two. Um, and I got okay results there, but but I wasn't really What you want to look for is signs of life when you're experimenting here.

Like you're not going to probably like have an amazing business, you know, on day one, but you want to look for some signs of life. Meaning, are you getting inbound, you know, at least some inbound from people who look like they're the right kind of leads, right? because if you are then you just need to do more of it and you can scale it up and and now you have a business but I was really not getting any inbound. I was like okay this feels like something is not right here. So then I the next pivot I did was helping business. So same market meaning like startups um but uh to help them with YouTube because what I observed is that pretty much every company sucks at YouTube you know even like Microsoft and Oracle and stuff they're spending you know god knows how much money on these videos that get 1,200 views and I was like well I could definitely help them with this. Um and so I started talking

about that quite a bit. Um, and I got a lot of engagement on that on LinkedIn, but again, I wasn't getting any inbound. And it wasn't really clear to me, you know, because I've worked on the agency side of things. I know how it works to like

to to to get in with these sort of companies and it wasn't really clear to me what my sort of strategy might be to to get in there because they have retainer agreements with all these big agencies and blah blah blah. And I'm just like, you know, I don't act I I don't think I'm going to be able to like get in with any of these big companies unless I really want to like I I I think it's a low percentage thing. Small companies could probably get in with them, but none of them really see it as like a need. They might be like casually interested in it, but if you're a startup, that's probably going to be low down, you know, the the priority stack.

So, I was like, I don't think this is a good offer for them. Um, and so then and all the but I did start getting some inbound but all of it was from soloreneurs. And so then I was like so again another lesson here again you put out an offer you see what happens and then you adjust and what you want to look for is like pay attention to the people who are actually giving you attention or money and then probably double down on that, right? And so I did get hired by a few people, you know, they gave me a few grand to help them and stuff and they were all soloreneurs and I thought about that. I was like, why is this? Um, and then I realized it's because solarpreneurs have a capacity for risk that companies don't. Um, and they and they and there's none of the political [ __ ] like you know how it is in any big company. Getting anybody to sign off on anything

is a nightmare, right? And and on YouTube, you you have like you have to be able to take chances and you have to be able to move fast. two things that basically even small companies can't do,

but solarreneurs can't. Um, and so that was sort of the next thing I did and that started working. And then I evolved it again to where I'm at now, which was after talking to some people about this and just sort of observing things. I was like, you know, there's definitely a market here, but there's a much larger market for helping those same people with LinkedIn for lots of reasons. We can talk about it if you want. So, I added uh helping them on YouTube and LinkedIn. And that has been the offer that's really working for me. But I still keep the YouTube thing there even though I get more interest in LinkedIn because it's a differentiator because there's lots of people that will talk to you about personal branding and helping entrepreneurs, you know, with LinkedIn, but none of them have 750,000 subscribers on YouTube like I do, right?

And none of them can also credibly offer to help you with LinkedIn. So when I talk to somebody, I'm like, "Okay, what are your goals? We could go this way with LinkedIn. We could go this way with YouTube. Both of these are an option. Let's just talk about which one makes sense." So YouTube is still my differentiator, even though it isn't necessarily like my core offer. So there was a lot there. I don't know if that's what you're looking for.

No, no, it's social proof. You know, we walk in all the time and you know, when I used to walk out on stage, it was this huge long dissertation of who I was and what I did.

The minute the book became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, I don't even get introduced by my name anymore. like Wall Street Journal best seller and I have to walk out like Charles. It just becomes this differentiator and you have to work to those assets and those strengths. Everyone talks about you know you know you want to focus on your weaknesses. Absolutely not. Double down on your strengths, outsource your weaknesses.

Make sure they're not crippling and then ignore them, right? Absolutely. So if someone's coming in, they're like, "Listen, I I need to do a better job on LinkedIn." Obviously, it's where the solarpreneurs are. This is where your niche is. This is something you're good at. And you can have leverage your social proof, which is what you're doing with the YouTube stuff. It's phenomenal social proof. Again, not to badmouth what you've done on on YouTube. It's phenomenal. But it it's kind of like describing the entire ocean by one grain of sand.

It just doesn't make there's so much more to it. So, I'm I'm not trying to dismiss what you've done in any way, shape, or form. I just think that there's so much more to your story that we want to talk about. So, when we come into LinkedIn and we do these type of things, what are some tangible things that are like, okay, this is what works. If you want to sit there and you want to pivot yourself and you want to say less an inch wide, mile deep and you want to be stand out as a differentiator with that 1% as you were mentioning, how do you do that? What are the tangible things that someone goes crap my LinkedIn mine personally is garbage. I haven't even looked at it in

a long time. I'd be happy to help things that I please. It's embarrassing. Um it's seriously I just I haven't touched it. People still hit me up like would you like to talk about your IT company? I'm like I sold that like 10 years ago. [ __ ] I should update my LinkedIn. It's embarrassing. So, being able to have that conversation, you know, what are the things that people could do? Take me for example. What are the things that I could do because I haven't touched it in a very long time. I'm embarrassed, but it's true.

So, step one is to pick that focus like I said and and again, you know, understand you it's very likely that you'll pivot lots of times just like I did, but you got to start somewhere just like anything else in business. So you pick what that focus is and then you need to optimize just basically give your entire profile um a reboot to reflect that. So you know tagline uh about section banner you know all that kind of stuff. And I could I'd be happy to get into the tactics of all those individual elements if you want but do that. Um, so what I would do, um, for your tagline, which I think or your headline, which I think is kind of the most important part, because when people see you in the feed, um, the first and they like either one of your comments or, you know, piece of content that you make, the first thing they're going to do, they're go, "Oh, that's interesting or smart. Who is that?" And they're

going to look at your profile picture and they're going to read that headline. And that's basically what Proctor and Gamble would call the first moment of truth. Meaning that when you see Tide on the shelf, you have about in within 3 seconds the the consumer has basically decided whether they want to buy it or not. And it's the same thing on social and you know in particular on LinkedIn. So the format I like for that headline is um you know this is not like universal but broadly speaking is to say what you do and who you do it for followed by some demonstrated proof of your expertise. So, you know, um it could be like um it could be uh helping horizontal SAS companies with SEO, you know, slash uh 50 plus, you know, websites overhauled since 2019, something like that.

So, you're integrating the social proof in the end of it. So, you're saying this is what I do. This is how I've done it. So, you know, kind of like for you, cuz I'm just thinking about this. You like I help people brand themselves slash750,000.1 million social something like that. So so you have you bring that social proof in immediately

so there isn't any debate whatsoever. Exactly. Or you know it the the the the second part of that sort of depends on the assets you have to work with. So for example for you I would say for sure Wall Street Journal bestselling author would be the thing to lead with there because as you've noted that's kind of the thing that's most persuasive. for someone else like let's say you've been you know um let's say you're a marketer and you've been a it could be like three times marketing leader or something like that or you know if you've won an award it really depends but just something where you just plop that down on your car on the table and instantly it's like clearly I know what I'm doing as you can see by the following and if you don't have if if if you feel like you don't have the assets to support that that probably means you need to revisit the first part of it because you might be overplaying your hand. It's it's getting

to that point where you can stand out as that 1%. And making sure that you're in that environment and say, "Listen, this is the reason you should listen to me. This is this is how it works." Yeah.

And there are some people, as you we talked about before, entrepreneurs, we've done a lot. We worn a lot of hats and this is probably why you've had eight iterations of it because you're like, "Well, this and then this." But what I loved about it was you didn't go up and tell the ocean when you wanted the waves to come in. You kind of listen to the market and it's like, "Oh, this is when the waves come in. I'm going to adapt to that. It's a it's a calm day. I'm going to deal with that. It's a rough day. I'm going to deal with that."

what the market will tell you what it's responding to. So many entrepreneurs, we get into situations when you try to scale going, "No, this is my grandmother's favorite recipe of cookies and I love them and now everyone has to love them and this." No, no one cares about your grandma. No one cares about her cookies. React to the market. Respond to the market. Put your ego aside. Get into the 1%. So, we've got our tagline coming in with social proof. We've decided that 1%, we're going to do this 1%.

When we go in next, I'm guessing it's the about us or what is our next step from there?

Uh, yeah. I mean, it could be either one, but uh the I I'll I'll say the banner the banner image just you could do them in either order, but the banner image um number one should have your face in it because you know people it's very simple, but people want to do business with people that they know, like, and trust. And the more times people see your face, the better. Um and you might not like the way you look. I certainly hate the way I look, but you got to put your face out there anyway because just that's how it works. So, put your face in there. And then also I like to describe the outcome of what will happen after somebody works with you. Um you could also tell them what you do but I would say like paint a picture of the world after they work with you. So you know for example again if you say you know oh uh if if you are um that SEO consultant I mentioned something like that it's like you know

um build traffic that converts something like that. So they're going to see what you do and who you do it for. They're going to see some social proof and then when they look at the banner, they'll have some idea of what the world will look like, what the benefit of working with you is.

Just so you're future focusing them in that environment. You're saying, "Okay, this is who I am. This is where I'm the best for it." And if you know your market well enough, this is the pain I'm relieving and the result you're going to get from it.

Exactly. Are there certain are there certain tools that you use? Is like, "Hey, I love this versus that. If it's Canva or whatever else it could possibly use,

it doesn't matter." All this people like nerding out about tools. I think it's dumb. Just use whatever you want.

Thank you. Total waste of time when people nerd up. It really is. Just get it done. I I you know, my favorite tool would be um OPT. Other people's time. Just have someone else [ __ ] do it and get out of the way. I'm like, "You make banners? Cool. Here's $5. Go make me a banner. I'm going to go back to my life now." Yeah. There's my That's my favorite tool in the world is OPT. Simple and easy. And when I'm investing, it's it's OPM. Using other people's money works out really well. So, I like it. banner 1enter

the result you're getting on a high level putting your face out there and then any sort of social proof which is great

y when we get into there and and you get in what are the you know when you look at content and design and starting to do these things which I'm pretty sure I skipped a couple of steps but how much should you be posting I mean because I I get YouTube is very different than LinkedIn which is very different than gram which is very different than

Tik Tok which is very different than Twitter because I refuse to call it by anything else you Kiss my ass. Twitter will be Twitter to the day I die. Uhuh. I'm not calling it X. That No, it's Twitter. Shut up. You killed a brand. You schmuck. Anyway, when you go into this and you need to deliver content, and you're trying to push these things in. Yeah.

What are the things? What how do you Is there a limit on how much you should post, how much you not post? Do you do it based off what other people are doing? What do we got here?

Well, it depends on your goals. um which is the the next step I would um the the well actually the very first step in the process should be to like outline your goals in terms of business objectives and I don't mean like become wellknown well why do you want to be no known what is the specific outcome you want to achieve right like close x number of deals you know of the following value or sell this much product at this you know whatever like in terms of like clear specific business objectives is goal number one or step number then you create a profile that you believe will enable you to achieve that goal. Um, and then the content piece, you know, and sort of your your question about how often and all that sort of stuff, uh, also depends on that goal.

Meaning that, um, if if I'm in B2B and I only need to close three deals to have a great year, well, that sends me in one direction. Um, if I'm in, you know, whatever, I I have a friend of mine has a company that does like product marketing consulting. and they have a productized offer that you know they they go through a like probably 150 people a year or something like that. So uh they need you know a bigger pipeline right absolutely they just need a much bigger pipeline.

So the answer depends on on your goals but broadly speaking there's two jobs that you need to do on LinkedIn. Uh job number one is to make yourself visible and you do that by content and by comments. This is a thing that a lot of people sort of overlook is the commenting. So job number one is to make yourself visible and then job number two is to convert that visibility into business outcomes meaning you know either um you know get people to subscribe to your newsletter uh product demo like get on a discovery call whatever that is. So um I would say most people and I'm speaking very broadly here um but most people if you post two or three times a week on LinkedIn that's probably enough. Um, you should also couple that with spending time engaging in the comments of other people's content. Um, specifically, um, find creators who have an audience that is composed of your ICP and take time to leave very deliberate,

thoughtful comments there. Don't force it. Don't try too hard. Like, only do it when it actually makes sense. But I'll give you an example of this. I booked five discovery calls in like a day from one comment I left. There's a guy named Adam Adam Robinson who's the CEO of retention.com. You know, if you're on LinkedIn, you might have seen him. He mentioned that he was looking for someone to help them with YouTube. And a couple people tagged me and I was like, "All right, well, I'm just going to leave him my pitch in this comment because, you know, I also DM'd it to him, but I'm sure his DMs are a mess."

So, I was like, "I'm just going to leave it in the comments." So, I wrote, I don't know, probably a three paragraph comment saying like, "Well, here's exactly what I would do if I was in your shoes. here's the questions I would want to answer if I worked with you. Um, and because that was a very specific, valuable comment, I got like probably 20 first connection requests from that and I booked five discovery calls and you know, so far one of those people has turned into a client. Hopefully a couple more will from a comment that probably took me 10 minutes to write. Um, which doesn't sound like a long time, but ask yourself this. Do you usually take 10 minutes to write a comment? Probably not.

More importantly, do you spend more than 10 minutes to try and get five leads? Yeah.

Because most people spend a lot more time to do that. And I think the important part of this because when we talk about scaling and doing this is the reason it worked so well was you were specific.

You said, "Hey, here's exactly what you need to do. I'm providing value to you. And if you take it, great. If you don't, fine. But I'm not some random person that has no social proof. I've got, you know, almost a million followers on there, million subscribers and so on and so forth. So it was already built into your profile. So the minute he goes, "Who is this schmuck giving me all this information right there in your tagline?" He's like, "Oh [ __ ] he's not a schmuck. He's actually he knows what he's talking about. He's moving forward in a way." So that so that kind of brings back that that whole circle of this is why your taglines need to look like this. This is why your banner because I'm sure he went over and he clicked on it and goes,

"Who the hell is this guy?" Click and oh shoot. Oh, okay. This is a different ball game we're in now.

The interesting part is I haven't talked to him. I I haven't talked to him yet, but five people in his audience contacted me and booked discovery calls. I I I hope I talk to him, but I I mean, whatever. I don't really care. I mean, if I do, awesome.

Yeah. Well, yeah, it's it's the four ways to get to get an to get a a customer, an audience. You can build it, you can buy it, you can borrow it, or you can beg for it.

And most people fail all the time because the first thing they do is they beg like, "Please like and subscribe." And then they buy it. So now you got all these cold leads. And then the other one which is build it which is just going to take way too long. Just way too long. The best way to do is what you just did which is you borrowed it. But in order to borrow it effectively you had to establish yourself as that 1enter and say here I am. This is what I did. I've given tremendous value and go I know I'm just going over again because someone's sitting there taking notes right now going mother. That's why which is why we create the lab report so we can walk you guys through all this. The tactical step here is um build a list of creators who have an audience composed of your ICP.

Turn on notifications for them in the LinkedIn app and every time you see them post as quickly as you can, assuming you have time, go look at that post and see if you can leave a really, really, really good comment. And again, don't force it, but if you can, like make a habit out of this. People will notice for sure, just like they did. So, you're going to post your own content, of course, but you know, like you said, that's building it, which you should do, but also borrow it by engaging with other people's content. That's job number one of being visible. Um, and then, uh, what you need to do is convert that visibility into into, you know, into business outcomes. So, hopefully, you know, you get lots of inbound and people DM you and like, Charles, you're so smart. I love all your content. Please do business with me. That will happen to some extent, but you don't want to rely on that. Um, and

especially in the beginning, you probably can't rely on that because you just don't have enough inbound. So, what you need to do is think of this as a funnel and move people down the funnel. Meaning, if anybody engages with your content in any way, whether that is, you know, a like or a comment or whatever, um, you have permission to then interact with them in some way. I would uh go look at their profile and if you think that they're relevant, add them as a connection because that means that your content is going to come up in their feed more often and also, you know, they'll just feel closer to you. Um, you can also, and when you do that, send them a personal note. There's a way to do that. Like, if you're doing it on desktop, it's easy. In the mobile app, I don't know why they hide this, but the default is just send them a connection with no message. What you want to do is is go down. There's an option that says

personalize invite. use that one and just send them a little note there that is based on something in their profile so that you know that they just they know that you didn't just copy and paste it. Um, literally anything like if they're from Kansas, you be like, "Hey, I was in Witchah last summer. It was really hot."

Literally anything personalized. I found out recently in LinkedIn uh because I I'm getting messaged through there that I can send voice notes which is something I love more than anything else because I can't spell to save my life. My grammar is horrible. It's embarrassing. So it's just easier for me to hold it down and go hi blah blah blah blah blah send hi and what I found is my open rate with those skyrocket because sending a voice message you're like oh my god this guy actually sent me a message. It's really really simple. It's really really easy. I won't do that with all of them, but I will sit there and every once in a while I'm like, "Hey, booga." Normally, when I'm driving to the gym or just driving to do errands, I'll just go through and rapid fire.

It's it's also what I do on Graham. It just I'll just sit there because it seems to have convers like, "Wow, this is actually someone took the time out to do this." So, as you're rebranding yourself, which you know, you had the idea before and you you you frontloaded it. You're you're going through these different iterations. You're now reaching out. You got the social proof. What is it? What are your next steps beyond that with if you're going in and you're teaching your your potential future clients now about how to rebrand themselves and do that as you started, you know, going through and and hunting their LinkedIn, do you hunt to their other socials? Do you go after their website? What are the other things that you found that convert on the highest level if they want to scale?

Um, meaning can you clarify? I'm not sure I understand. Absolutely. So, it you know, it's not just LinkedIn, right? We have these other ideas of you, you encourage people to, hey, we got to we got to go after your website. we got to go after your gram, we got to go after your YouTube station. You know, you've got to publish a book. This is what your lead magnet look like. What are the other things that you do?

No, you don't need to do all that [ __ ] Um, you you could, but you know, it's like anything else in business. Like there's a list of things in your business that need to be fixed that's probably 10 miles long, right? And and it's and it's never going to get any shorter than that. There's an endless things list of things you could do, but you just got to start with something and and go on from there. So, to your point earlier about playing to your strengths, um I think it it unless there's something out there that's just like glaringly horribly broken and wrong, ignore it and just focus on LinkedIn because nobody's do like put it this way, when you're on LinkedIn, do you click on anybody's website? Do you Google them and go find their Instagram?

Probably not, right? You don't. Like I I had somebody who um she hired me like months ago and I you know talked to her like fairly often and she was like, "Oh, by the way, your website's really nice. I never looked at it before now." Right? It's like she's already paid me. We've worked together. She never looked at my website. So my point here is like don't let that stuff hold you back unless it is truly like a crippling liability. Just ignore it. Like a LinkedIn profile is fine. I know somebody who has a very successful like six-figure agency. The agency didn't even even have a website for the first year and a half it existed. Like you don't need all that [ __ ]

And I feel so much better about the fact that I haven't focused on my LinkedIn or my website in years and I just now starting to update this stuff cuz it was just I wasn't paying attention to anything because just, you know, work was coming in. So that makes me feel a little bit better less wanting to play in traffic at the moment. So I appreciate I appreciate that.

Yeah. What are some of the tools? I know you talk about we don't get married to any of these specific tools. What are the things that you found because you have had such rattles success in so many different areas that you're like hey this is this book that just this changed it or this is this one supplement that changed it. What are the things that you have found that god if I could have gone back if I just knew about this and this on a practical not as far as a life lesson because God knows we've had enough of those

you know it is what it is. What are the things that you're like you know what this thing I wish I knew about this one thing. What are the things that you've had that you've come across that you're like, "Wow, these are game changers for me."

Autism. Okay. Figuring out that. All right. And what have you done to offset that?

I don't offset it. Um, it just You let you lean into it. Yeah. Because that's I mean, I'm not going to change it, right? Um, so I just have to understand who I am and how I work. And that's the reason why like I am like I I'm like biologically incapable of bullshitting. like it's literally the way my brain works. Autistic people are not good at this. And so I've just decided to lean into that. For example, with my LinkedIn content, I make it like very like no [ __ ] like brutally honest type stuff because those are the people I want to work with because I know from past experience if you're the type of person that, you know, wants me to be gentle and, you know, whatever, like it's just not me. Like I'm a very thoughtful like caring, kind person. But the way I express that, it' be like, "Charles, your website [ __ ] sucks. We need to fix it. Here's what we should do."

And you're and I want to work with the type of people who go, "Oh, awesome. Thank you for telling me that." And yeah, that sounds good. Let's do it.

I don't want I don't want to work with people where I have to go, you know, stroke their ego and blah blah blah. So,

very pretty. No, you're in my way move. Yeah. Absolutely. So, but anyway, you don't you don't want life lessons. Um,

man, honestly, like that's fine if you want to share. No, no, no. Uh, honestly, man, I I I the the biggest tactical tool tip I would say is to just don't [ __ ] worry about them because it's a total waste of time. Everybody I know who like obsesses over using the latest new, you know, G- Whiz tool and stuff, they're never the most productive people. The most productive people I know all use the dumbest, most basic [ __ ] like Apple Notes, you know, and [ __ ] Gmail and like I I don't know. I mean, I'm just not the person to ask about that because I don't think that stuff matters very much. Just decide on your goal and use the the the least complex tool you can use to execute on that goal is my advice.

I agree. It one of the guys who is the the best trader that I've ever met as far as doing high frequency trading, uh I was at his IT, so this is 20 something years ago. I took his keyboard away because it was missing all the keys. I was like, "Oh [ __ ] his keyboard's broken. I'm going to give him a new keyboard." And he came out and he's like, "Where's my keyboard?" And I was like, "I gave you a new one." He go, "Give me my old one back." And he wasn't he just he was he was absolutely on the spectrum and he crushed it. That worked very specifically. Don't [ __ ] touch my keyboard. Was like, "Copy that. I'm not going to touch your keyboard."

The people I know that I just did a a podcast with somebody. He's manic bipolar

and he sat there and and there was this whole guilt loop that he had for years and years and years about being manic bipolar. And then it took him about 3, four years ago. He just leaned into it and he's like, "This is what helped me crush it. I realized that this was a strength. It wasn't a weakness. I'm going to lean into this and I'm only going to work with people that that doesn't rustle their feathers off. I'm like, listen, if I do, I'm not your person. I'm not your guy. The pool's big enough. There's enough people on the planet. Get out of my way. I'm just going to get into it.

Well, it sounds like I need to get out of your way so I can go fix my LinkedIn profile because it's horrible. So, having someone like you, I might have to pick your brain like, "Excuse me, sir. How do I fix my [ __ ] It's really broken."

Happy to chat. So, that be it would be really helpful. Um, I really appreciate you coming on and being direct and to the point and not doing any flop. I think people walked away with an immense amount of tangible things. How do people find you? How do people track you down? And where do you want them to track you down if they do?

Uh, finnmcky.com is my website, which you can look at if you want. Um, but I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place to look me up. So, just look me up on there. F I N C N T Y. And uh, always happy to chat to anybody if you think I can help.

All right, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. The market doesn't care about your feelings or your comfort zone. It only responds to value and authenticity. Stop waiting for permission to pivot.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Turning Invisibility into Influence - Finn McKenty"?

Finn McKenty (Guest), Charles (last name unknown) (Host).

What is discussed in "Turning Invisibility into Influence - Finn McKenty"?

In order: 0:00 Balance, Finn McKente, Nintendo, Product design; 10:00 personal branding, Product design; 15:00 Google Ventures, Greylock, Product design, Social Capital; 20:00 Wall Street Journal, First moment of truth, Inch wide, mile deep, personal branding; 25:00 OPT (Other People's Time); 30:00 Adam Robinson, retention.com; 35:00 Kansas; 40:00 Apple Notes, finnmcky.com.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

29 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Product design, personal branding, Wall Street Journal, Proven Podcast, Finn McKente, Nintendo. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Turning Invisibility into Influence - Finn McKenty"?

The episode runs 44 min; the transcript is about 10,203 words in 105 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.