LinkedIn Wanker

I’ve gone from fired in late April to somewhat operational today - seems quick, felt longer. As scary as that was, I had to make some changes, one of those resulted in my AI upskilling from polite chat prompter to using automations through Cowork to create a full outreach programme for a client to run personalized cold emails and follow ups. What would normally take days of research, strategy and copywriting took about the same time as it did for me to give up fasting.

Stay with me.  I’m not just punting myself.

When I started hunting for clients, I was hungrier than a castaway and was willing to use any means necessary. I found Ruben Hassid’s How to AI to upskill. It’s excellent.

I judge people heavily on how they behave online. I find LinkedIn particularly wanky.

I thought I had to play the game, which is when Ruben’s Claude + LinkedIn really captured my attention. Creating a Claude Skill to understand which of my LinkedIn posts have been most successful, to get attention and turn that attention into clients. Conform or die.  

It worked. After 30 minutes of effort, I developed the skill using Ruben’s step-by-step guide and my LinkedIn posts were getting more attention than your drunk uncle at a wedding (ME.) I was more impressed than a waiter when I tell them, that I was a waiter too. I wink at them, they smile. They cry inside. They go home and start to learn guitar. Doing everything they can not to turn into the middle-aged man that tries to relate with them earning minimum wage by telling them that he too walked in their shoes – only to have a failed Idols audition, give up the dream and start a family. Stops exercising, starts to make sacrifices for the children. Wears running shoes – because they’re comfy. Uses the word, comfy. One day while getting a coffee, he winks at the barista – “I used to steam milk.”

To build the skill you use tools to analyze all your previous posts and this develops the insights into which of these were the most successful and why.  Then, I use the skill to help me workshop ideas for posting.

Every post made me sound increasingly like a LinkedIn Wanker.

I’m glad you asked, but you know what a LinkedIn Wanker is. You’ve been one.

I blamed AI. But a good workman doesn’t blame his tools. The data was drawn from my own work. My own writing. Years and years of posts of me being a LinkedIn Wanker. All the skill did was draw my LinkedIn Wankiness and make posts for me, each one wankier than the next. I was in a LinkedIn Wanker wormhole.  Humbled to have been awarded this title.

I was optimising my own wankiness.

There’s a lesson in this. Just because LinkedIn reacts to the wankiness doesn’t mean we have to lean in.

Maybe because I’ve been listening to a lot of Amyl and the Sniffers, I’m feeling a little punk.  I’m at my best when I’m not trying too hard, when I’m irreverent or going against the grain. On LinkedIn, I tried to be the grain. I was corny.

You don’t have to be a LinkedIn Wanker to win work. I was reminded yesterday that you win work through doing really good work. Good hard work is rewarded with more work.

Stay unwanky.