Going deep, before you charm your audience

Greg looked him straight in the eyes, almost getting into his face, to emphasize the seriousness of the moment. A very tall and strong man, with black hair and a sharp beard, when he got serious, he would look almost scary to those who didn't know him.

Greg was the founder of a brand new startup, a startup that desperately needed people - not just any people, but the fearless and persistent ones, those 1% which are hardest to find, just when you need them the most.

In fact, Greg was a simple family man, well-liked by his friends, but extremely motivated to prove his wife wrong when she worried too much about his entrepreneurial venture failing ingloriously.

"This is something new. It's a startup, man. Here you won't have the security you had in the corporation you left behind, but I'm offering you an opportunity to grow that you won't find anywhere else. You'll learn a lot. Just sign the contract." Greg said, showing no intention of backing off from the arrogant pose he had assumed.

The man, Greg got in the face of, testing his resolve, was Mike, an experienced sales manager, a man who was highly respected by everyone in his industry. Mike was a sales legend in the corporation, which he recently left, sensing also that the market was changing, and now Mike was looking for something new, undefined for now.

Mike wasn't intimidated by Greg's attitude. Well, just a month earlier, he was entering decisive sales conversations with executives on a daily basis, and regularly coming out victorious.

Mike was also a man of strong character, as was Greg, only this time, as fate wanted, in the role of a job seeker. For the first time, he wasn't backed by a powerful corporation - he felt naked because of that fact, but also somehow free; everything was different now that he had left the corporate jungle behind.

All this took place in a cafe, in a shopping center where Greg often came to buy gifts for his family, who were a little longing for his visits home, which, due to his increasingly frequent trips, were getting later and less frequent.

Mike, on the other hand, was in this cafe for the first time, and was accompanied by his wife, who hugged their newborn child close to her, and followed the development of the situation from a safe distance.

She knew that Mike was a man of high self-respect and that he would not allow Greg to dominate him just like that; she had a premonition of the culmination of events but she didn't want to interfere. Mike's current weakness that prevented him from reciprocating Greg with similar attitude was his newly estabilished family.

He knew he needed the job desperatly, and that he couldn't tell Greg he didn't like his brashness - but there was more to it than the overriding of two strong egos; everything in the air smelled like an opportunity for a good cooperation, a business partnership made in heaven, if only these titans don't start to argue before that, once again.

Mike's newborn son, Arnold, began to cry, so Mike's wife began to tirelessly comfort him. The conversation about the possibility of Mike joining Greg as a key sales person in Greg's startup dragged on, and with the mutual pomposity of the two, Mike's wife and child were tired.

Although he didn't agree with Greg on everything, Mike made up his mind when, avoiding Greg's hypnotic gaze, he looked in the direction of his wife who was looking thoughtfully into the distance and sighing deeply.

The deal is done. "We'll start training next week. You're in for an intense week." Greg added, becoming visibly more relaxed and friendly now that he was sure he had Mike on his sales team.

There's a bit of Greg and Mike in all of us, but I hope you enjoyed a good story. This story served as an example that I wanted to illustrate today's key lesson, which is identifying and building a digital personality that will make you stand out on LinkedIn.

Each of us has a unique personal history, experiences and talents that differentiate us from each other. For a good performance on LinkedIn, it is necessary to appreciate our uniqueness, and to present to the audience such unique content that stems from our real personality. In such a case, we brand ourselves in the best possible way, and it becomes impossible to copy us.

You are the expert on yourself and no one else can create content the way you do, at least not in the long run and with the real satisfaction you will get once you get to know yourself like never before.

"Armin, you presented us with your startup novel, you talk about self-branding, but now you're already getting into self-development. Isn't that a little too much?" I imagine my readers would ask me exactly that.

I think that self development here is not accidental. None of my colleagues deal with it - content and only content - they only touch that part, forgetting that the best content comes from the creator's personality.

If we delve deeply into ourselves, we will find some values and themes, obscured by everyday work obligations. How easy it will be to create content when we know what and why we are writing. Let's ask ourselves deep questions, let them lead us to the content that we would like to release into the world.

If you feel inspired or thoughtful after reading my newsletter, it means you have invested your time well. Those who don't like this type of content, long ago sailed elsewhere, but considering that numbers of my readers is increasing every day, it seems that I managed to find the right formula that attracts very high quality people, and in great numbers. I wish you the same.

...Mike's wife, Celeste, was highly charming and educated, and until her marriage to Mike, she worked as a marketing manager in the IT sector. She left everything behind to realize herself as an artist.

The long-standing desire to express herself through the creation of unique objects made of glass, and the freedom that such a small business brings, has not yet brought the expected financial results, so Mike's impeccable agreement with Greg was the only thing that gave her hope.

All Celeste could think about, was her and Mike's son Arnold, and how she and Mike had bonded even more in recent days.

The days of carefree corporate cocktail parties were behind them, but she strongly felt the need for her and Mike to achieve something greater in life, at least something that would fulfill them more, and the current insecurity, was a small price to pay for them, to feel the depth of life...

Thank you for following and I wish you success.

Until next reading,

Armin Stani?