How Deleting Nearly Half My Social Followers Made Me a Millionaire

More Followers and Chasing Vanity Metrics Are Not The Answer to Profitability

It was 2017. I’d just sold my shares in my Silicon Valley digital agency and decided to go solo.

Honestly, I had no plans except to relax for a while and then plan my next move.

LinkedIn came into the picture because I knew I would not leave B2B, and LinkedIn is the ultimate B2B platform.

So I got a professional headshot and hired an expert to write my updated resume. I honestly had not had a resume in over 10 years! Next, I spent a couple of grand consulting with LinkedIn coaches, who taught me how to optimize my profile.

It was only in 2018 that I started using LinkedIn regularly and made some valuable connections with LinkedIn employees and other entrepreneurs. I started hosting LinkedIn Local networking meetings in San Francisco. I also started volunteering to help jobseekers learn LinkedIn.

Everyone seemed to be obsessed with numbers. Growth was the frenzy LinkedIn users were chasing. It was a popularity game and I grew my following very quickly. Too quickly, in fact.

Because I noticed something: the larger my network grew, the less quality people I attracted.

By the end of 2018, I felt like LinkedIn was one big popularity contest and I was playing a losing game. I had an honest look at my network and made a radical decision: I would delete a large portion of my followers. When I told others about my plans, the reaction was, ‘are you crazy?’. But I knew it was the right thing to do. I exported my entire list and hired someone to help me sort and purge. It was not an easy process. I reduced my network by about 40%.

The new network was much smaller, but LinkedIn started showing my content to them and guess what?

I started getting a lot of unique opportunities.

Companies wanted to pay me 6 figures to help their teams build up their content strategy, their executives set up newsletters, and to consult on social selling. I also started launching courses and opened two online memberships. Lastly, I work as a business coach and startup advisor.

In total, I have made well over 7 figures with coaching, consulting, and digital products (both my own and ones I’m affiliated with) directly from LinkedIn leads.

My LinkedIn network became a lean, mean, money-making machine.

Because the algorithm only shows your posts to a portion of your network, small is not always bad.

The critical detail is curation. Only connect with people who genuinely care about your business specialty. Friendships are nice but better for other platforms since on LinkedIn, I am here for business. And you can still have both! Just be careful to focus on the prize for business opportunities over socializing.

Deleting roughly 40% of my network was one of the best business decisions I made on LinkedIn.

Today I run an online platform to teach entrepreneurship, and often my students ask me for tips to grow. When they hear my story, they are shocked.

I see many who grew large and are broke. They connect with anyone and everyone or used automation tools that are forbidden by LinkedIn, but many still risk using for their personal insecurities. Their networks are full of dead weight, people who are low-quality non-leads and not even related to their industry or geographical market.

I still regularly get pitched to ‘help me grow,’ and I just laugh.

Many of these ‘influencers’ come to me as consulting clients to ask for advice on how to actually monetize. My advice to them: purge your network. It is sad to see how many poor influencers are out there. One lady with over 300,000 followers told me she’d work for $50 USD to do any job. I, on the other hand, am aiming more for details that have at least three more zeros behind them.

The next time you receive an offer to help you grow on LinkedIn, please remember my story. Small is better for business if you are B2B. And if you are B2C, it is better to hire a clever ad specialist to ensure you grow only with a targeted audience, but never via automation tools or ‘lead gen experts’ (aka spammers). It is easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of vanity metrics, but ultimately for B2B, these figures mean very little.

For the past four years, I have been active on LinkedIn, but I am very strategic about who I connect with.

When I realized the right and wrong way to grow, I wanted to share my findings with others.

So I created a?community?for solopreneurs where I teach content strategy, funnel building, and more.

I wish someone had taught me this not-so-popular approach from day one, and I’d not have wasted time and been even more profitable today. But at least now, I can make the journey for others smoother.

Looking back, I could’ve avoided many mistakes if I had followed a more strategic, targeted approach.

Click here?to learn how you can become the go-to expert in your niche and a profitable entrepreneur without chasing vanity metrics or wasting your time.

My name is Krista Mollion, and I run?From Zero 2 Six Academy, where I guide service-based entrepreneurs on how to grow profitable online businesses via content, funnels, and systems. If you are a startup founder who cares about?#entrepreneurship, hang out with me and check out my programs and services. Please follow me on?LinkedIn?where I share everything I know about being a profitable solopreneur.

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