The blind men and the LinkedIn elephant

Find Your Superpower newsletter 087

Read time: 5 minutes

Topics covered: Professional branding, monetization, Mastermind enrolling soon

My old life and new life collided one day.

I met someone from my past life as an academic.

He’s a professor, a very senior one too.

Of course I was very happy to see him. It’s always nice to meet old friends.

After the basic courtesies, I could tell from his body language that there was a big question headed my way.

I braced.

He paused.

And he let the million-dollar question fly: “So, Juliana, I see you post all the time on LinkedIn. Why do you keep posting on LinkedIn? Do you make any money when you post?”

Ah there it is.

I saw this question coming.

I knew he was going to ask me this question, because my mom has asked me this question over and over again, for YEARS. She regularly asks me this question, and I regularly explain the answer to her.

There is no simple answer to this question, because I first must assess:

1. Your communication era: Are you old school (you read physical newspapers and watch cable TV) or are you GenAlpha (you consume all news and information from social media)
2. Your digital literacy level: Is it 0 (you can’t even log into Facebook) or 10 (you know a coding language)
3. Your income source(s): Is it from a single source (full-time employee) or multiple sources (small business owner or solopreneur)

This professor happens to be on the far left of this spectrum: he reads physical newspapers, he is mostly a consumer on social media, and he is a full-time employee.

Is someone paying you to post on LinkedIn?

Anyone brought up in the newspaper, TV and radio era (AKA the pre-internet era) is familiar with the concept of advertising.

To make money off any piece of content, like a newspaper article or a TV drama series, you have to allow someone to place an advertisement on the same page as your article or during a TV break.

If an advertisement spot costs $1,500, then you earn $1,500 from someone placing an advertisement on your content.

Had I replied to the professor’s question with a simple “yes,” he would assume I was being paid by my clients to advertise their products or services.

But the problem here is, I write and post whatever I want to on LinkedIn.

In fact, I’ve gone rogue in 2025 and I enjoy making my LinkedInese humor series with my daughter.

(Disclaimer: While I do accept sponsored posts from time to time, it is far from my top three sources of income. I think of it as pocket money or a bonus.)

The 10-second answer

The 10-second answer is extremely unsettling for anyone who is an analytical thinker like me and prefers receiving black-and-white answers.

The shortest possible answer to this question is: I make money from building a brand.

I can already see mom spinning from that answer.

But that makes no sense at all, Juliana. How does building “a brand” pay the bills?

The 10-minute answer

Well, do you have 10 minutes then? Everything starts from a brand.

If you have 10 minutes, here’s a better answer to that question:

1. First you find a category or niche (e.g. STEM, career strategy, investing) that you are passionate about and that you are confident you are the world’s (or at least regional or national) foremost expert in.
2. Then, you gain credibility by receiving certification, work experience, success stories, testimonials, media interviews and coverage, awards and/or innovator credit in that category.
3. Third, you demonstrate your credibility to your target audience regularly via your preferred platform (in my case, LinkedIn) to claim ownership of that niche.
4. Fourth, you regularly provide value by teaching, supporting, helping, inspiring, educating and even entertaining (!) the folks interested in your niche.
5. Finally, you create an offer in your niche that nobody can refuse, which could be your consultancy/coaching services, amazing keynote speech, value-for-money online course, well-written book, or, if you are a corporate executive, you tell decision makers and recruiters that you are searching for a new opportunity, a board director seat, and so on.
6. Watch the money (or job offers) flow in.

What my professor friend had been observing was me repeating steps 3 and 4 over and over again.

Rinse and repeat.

He obviously couldn’t see where the money was coming from, simply because he is the metaphorical blind man here and LinkedIn is the metaphorical elephant.

Very much like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, he was focused only on one part of the elephant (steps 3 and 4) which left him bewildered, trying to make sense of this strange creature.

You can’t make a living as an influencer, but you can as a domain expert

I heard this clever statement on a podcast: “You can’t make a living from social media, but you can make a fortune.”

Increasingly, more and more youth want to be influencers, and the sad fact is most of them will not make any money from it.

Yes, there will always be a Mr Beast who will make a fortune from social media, but he is an extreme outlier. The vast majority will only earn hundreds to thousands annually from their extensive efforts, sometimes as often as creating and posting videos daily.

Therefore, focusing all of your efforts on making money directly from social media is most certainly a losing game for most people. Please reconsider this strategy.

This is also why I generally decline working with people whose primary goal is to get #### new followers, or to rank #1 or #2 on some social media list.

These are vanity metrics. An ego trip.

Likes on LinkedIn won’t pay the rent, mortgage, dinner, drinks and vacations.

What would, however, pay for all of the above, and then some, is your deep expertise in a specific niche.

You don’t need 1 million, 100,000 or even 10,000 random people to like your content on LinkedIn.

You only need anywhere from 100 to 1,000 of your target audience to be attracted to your content, to find 10 to 100 amazing clients from among them.

Our actions from step 1-4 are designed to claim leadership and ownership of our niche, before we present step 5, an amazing offer that no one can refuse.

After years of working on my offers, I now have a family of incredible offers that allow me to monetize my expertise and knowledge in multiple ways—six ways, to be exact.

In closing, to the professor and mom, if you ask me if I am paid to write on LinkedIn, my answer will now be:

“Yes, but please read newsletter 087 to understand how I do it.”

PS: Do you want to learn how to unlock steps 1-5?

Doors to my 12-month Brand Builder Mastermind will finally re-open on 14 January.

We launched on New Year’s Day with 162 Founding Members, and we will enroll only 10 new Mastermind cadets every month. If you want to join us in building a brand in 2025, please be nimble, please be quick.

Doors open in 48 h.