Latest / The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders / Find Your Yay with Matthew Rolnick

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Find Your Yay with Matthew Rolnick · The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

• Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to today's episode of the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. This special episode is the fourth in our four part mini series here on increasing your influence through communication, finding your voice as a leader, using different channels to get the word out and to really use that to benefit. your leadership. My guest for this episode was Matthew Rolnick. This is a conversation we recorded about his book, Find Your Yay. It's all about finding your voice and growing your brand on social media. So it'll be a great addition to this series where we've had conversations about public speaking. about, you know, media training, about [00:01:00] storytelling and how to craft your message and your communication and communicate those mission, vision, and values, all those things that are so important as leaders. So this will tie that all together. Nicely. Matt was recently named the SVP of Partnerships and Events for the Real American Beer Company. That is a company that's founded by the wrestler Hulk Hogan. And he has been working on building that company. He previously was VP of Strategy and Innovation at Yay Maker. He is an Amazon bestselling author, a speaker, a 2023 top entrepreneurship voice on LinkedIn and as a Udemy instructor. He is had over 135,000 students take his courses. This conversation covers a lot of great topics and things that we all can use and. Being able to build our brand as professionals, communicate our message, build our networks. So, I hope you'll really enjoy this conversation. Without further ado, here is Matt [00:02:00] Rolnick. Matthew, welcome to the show. Matt Rolnick: Thanks for us excited to be talking to you today. Ross Romano: So This book is about, broadly, finding your voice, growing your brand on social media, right? Something that professionals in a lot of fields some are doing really well, some are just kind of getting used to it. In your perspective, who should do this? Should everybody be doing it? You know, why is it important? Matt Rolnick: So for the most part, I think almost everybody should. Now if there's certain things you have to keep profile, a low profile, or you know, you're very introverted, or things like that, you know, might not be for everyone, but in general, I think it's important to network. I think it's important to make yourself professionally visible, and there's, You know, use TikTok, but I love LinkedIn, and I think it can open up a lot of opportunities, and new partnerships it can open up new job opportunities, I think it can bring in, so I think there's a lot of things, it can position you more as a thought leader, so I think there's a lot of opportunities and [00:03:00] benefits of embracing social media more. Ross Romano: Platform wise you know, you just referenced LinkedIn. Let's talk about that first and then if there's others, but you know, it's something particularly for our listeners that are in education and you know, I see one, I see a lot of. opportunity for better utilization. I think LinkedIn in general is an underutilized platform, but more and more people are embracing it and making more use of it, particularly as a content platform as a place to be more active versus just. the place where kind of your resume sits, right? And I do see more folks as they're moving up into higher levels of leadership position that they're have more of a presence there. I don't know if that's a correlation. I don't know if it's which is the chicken, which is the egg. But you'll talk more about LinkedIn, what you think about that platform in general and what some of the value is there that people might not. quite be understanding.[00:04:00] Matt Rolnick: So there's a few things interesting you shared. So really you're talking about a billion people on the site, professional, so it's more about business and networking and and you shared like it was the chicken and the egg. There are some companies that are, look at the way I look at it, where ideally you encourage employees to share more in their own voices because it is, I look at it as almost a free marketing tool to get the word out. So there are companies that are encouraging employees to utilize it more there's a lot of people that are still uncomfortable with it because either the They're scared whatever they post will be perceived wrong, or it might not get a lot of engagement, and will they look badly at it, or they just have no idea what they want to post. So that I hear is kind of common, but I do think, as I said, I think it's a big miss for most professionals not to embrace it more. For some of the same reasons that I shared earlier, I think it establishes you more as a thought leader in your [00:05:00] industry. And again, I think you can make some great connections, and I know for, you know, for myself, for others there, you can really grow business from it as well, and it can promote other things you're doing, and you never know what organically people that you meet. So, I've met some incredible people. that I've worked closely with or have now gotten together that I consider friends. So personally, professionally, I've seen a lot of benefits from LinkedIn. Ross Romano: Are there other platforms that stand out to you as either do's, you know, more valuable, think about spending more time here, or don't, you know, don't waste your time here. Or if you use this for personal things, great, but don't think about it as a professional, Matt Rolnick: Well, I think that, you know, I'm going to bucket or bifurcate things. B2C or B2B. So anyone's business to business B2B. I think LinkedIn is really, can be powerful and effective. If your business is more business to consumer, then I think, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok can [00:06:00] be much more powerful than it. So, I've seen, you know, whether someone are life coaches or they do training or nutritionists, or, you know, they're selling, you know, they have a brand of t shirts or whatever it is, whether it's Coca Cola or, as I said, whether it's an individual entrepreneur, I think you can do well all those different platforms. The, you know, I think the, It's hard to do all of them well. I know a lot of people delegate or outsource a lot of content, and with AI, it can make things even better. You know, I'm a big believer in being authentic with your content. I like people, you know, doing their own, sending their own messaging, things like that. But to answer your question, business to business, I think LinkedIn is very powerful. Some of these other platforms, I think, can work very well for business to consumer, but You know, I think you can be creative utilizing them all. (ad here) Ross Romano: you know. What about the importance specifically of being consistent with it, I would say, and viewing it [00:07:00] as. And ongoing not, you know, LinkedIn in particular, right. People tend to get more active when they're looking for a job. And all of a sudden this person who's never really had much of a presence there. Now they're trying to put content out there, connect with people and all of that. But those who are consistently, you know, just kind of cultivating a network, right. Having a mentality of service. Good, you know, it's great when you have times where there's nothing you need, because those are times when you can help other people and then, you know, eventually you'll be looking for something, but but, you know, I think that's something that is, has not always been intuitive to a lot of users there that that there's value to just seeing it as something you're routinely using it to connect and engage no matter, you know, where you are, as far as I'm happy in my job, I'm looking for something, whatever. Matt Rolnick: So I use [00:08:00] one analogy of kind of working out. So, for example, if you do work out two, three times a week for six months, you're going to start seeing results. If you work out just once or twice, You're not going to see those benefits. So that's one way I look at LinkedIn or social media. If you are consistent and you stick with it, you'll see more and more benefits. They'll start to amplify. However, not everybody wants to be a content creator or be so active. For me, it's natural. I'm much more organic. I mean, I like it. So I'm immersed in the platform, but for somebody who's really busy, I'm a believer in, hey, can you commit 10 minutes a month to make yourself and I'll say more professionally visible. And really it can be one post a month. I think that still is, it will be definitely beneficial. And by the way, even if you don't want to post once a month, even if you like other people's posts [00:09:00] or ideally comment on other people's posts, there are benefits to that as well. People post, people want to be validated. They want to be heard. But if you make a post, If I like it, you'll appreciate that. If I make a comment, you'll appreciate that even more. But if I make a comment that's more thoughtful, that extends the conversation, that's even going to be more powerful. And so one way, I mean, so for people that can't even think of, you know, what they'd want to post, that's kind of a baby step to just like and engage more. And there are benefits to that because later if you want to work with that person or talk to them about a job or want to bounce ideas. If they see over the last few months that you've engaged in their content a few times and or commented or help Strengthen it. It's they're gonna be more likely or have a higher affinity to want to talk to you So, so those are some I guess 101 tips to share. Ross Romano: Yeah. Affinity is a great word. You know, when the, you have people who [00:10:00] are genuine and thoughtful and responding to it, you really feel positively toward them. Right. And even Simple engagement, liking, you know, content, things like that. There's a small amount of brain share and you see, oh, you know, you see those names popping up. Oh, this person's really been responding to a lot of my content lately and it's something that You store away for later and then eventually down the road, you're thinking, Oh yeah. And you just have that, even if it's a little bit unconscious, right. But you have that positive feeling toward that person down the road and, you know, be that, be the person that people feel positively toward that people remember you know, in our networks, your networks grow over time. And by the time you have thousands of people in there, you have, A small percentage of those people that you worked with really closely and you clearly remember that relationship. You have others that it's been a [00:11:00] long time since you, you worked with them or had a deeper connection. There's others that you don't even remember why you're connected, right? But eventually you're, those relationships. online can take on a life of their own and become their own relationship separate from why you were connected in the first place, right? But it takes nurturing to make that happen. Matt Rolnick: And to kind of go with that, I mean, you know, I've got a, I've got a strong following and I get people often reaching out to me when they're thinking about changing their careers or an opportunity or things like that. And I find it always interesting every once in a while, someone out of the blue that I haven't spoke to or in eight years may reach out to me and maybe they've never engaged in any of my content. But if there's somebody that's. You know, let's say three weeks ago, Leichter mentioned one thing on my post that really kept me top of mind, and it feels a little more like a two way street. I mean, anytime you just randomly [00:12:00] reach out to somebody and saying, Hey, I could, I'm looking for something. You know, people have guards up in certain ways, but if they know that you've been paying attention to them, and you show support, it does make a difference, and I think people underestimate the importance of nurturing relationships, staying in touch with people get, when they're, they currently have a position, they get so locked in their own world, their own job, I feel they kind of, the rest of the world, they kind of, Block out a little bit and I feel like it should be important to just take a little time and again As you mentioned somewhat consistent just to nurture those relationships and again, and I'll say make yourself professionally visible. Ross Romano: Yeah, totally. So, let's talk about what people share, how they represent themselves. And one of these terms that you know, I think people have different emotional reactions to is brand or personal brand. How do you define that? What makes that an important thing to understand? And, you know, not a dirty word, right? It's Matt Rolnick: [00:13:00] Yeah, you know what? It's gonna sound corny or cliche, but you know being you hear the word authentic a lot So that's an overused probably word, but I still like to use it or things like that It's like you know You know, we're all humans, you know, we're all, you know, and so again, I talk LinkedIn, you try to be professional, but show your human side. I feel like that should be your brand. And I think it's good actually to incorporate things that are more personal. I mean, so if you're someone who loves pickleball, you know, you can incorporate that into content. If you love 80s music, that's fine. You know, I have a friend, he was a chief strategy officer who You know, he grew up, he's dyslexic, he's been dyslexic his whole life, and it's been, it was really challenging on him in school and in the professional world, but we talked, and he's like, you think I should post about it, and I was like, absolutely, because he looks at his now as a superpower, and he's posted about that, and not only positioned himself more as a thought leader and shared tips on how to do it, but he's connected with people in ways that He didn't imagine, he once had a CEO of a client that he worked with [00:14:00] that went to him and said, I read your post. My son has dyslexia. It meant, your post meant so much to him and me. And it was just like, he just, he was so glad he embraced it. So, but I mean, dang, that's now part of his personal brand. Now some people like to share a lot more or less, but what in general, when I think about personal brand, I think about, all right, let's be realistic. What's your job, what's your industry. And again, you want to, Position yourself in that space. So if someone's selling software, You know, positioning yourself and making sure that your content revolves around some of that, I think is important. But then, what makes you different or what makes you stand out with it? And having a personal touch. I mean, people connect with humans. And if you can engage people in a little bit of a different way, in your own style or flair that's how I mean, I gave a long winded answer on what I think a brand is, but I kind of combine my personal and professional brand, so me personally, I like helping people, I like forming partnerships, I like [00:15:00] I, sometimes I'm a little cheesy or throw in some puns, I mean, but I like to have fun at work, I talk about corporate culture, and employee engagement, and I try to tie that all in, in a human way. Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And I, Speculate that a lot of the resistance to either that terminology or the idea is around a misunderstanding that it's inauthentic, that it's fabricated versus being, you know, a little more comfortable showing a little bit more of yourself, of your ideas, of who you are and, Being a little more present in those platforms as a way to allow other people to understand you, to connect with you, right, to form an affinity and see where you have commonalities or ideas that people like and, and just allowing almost Attracting the people who are attracted [00:16:00] to you and your ideas and thoughts, right? And, but it, you know, there's a certain comfort level we each have to get with being there and there's certain things, especially depending on the platform that you may decide this is appropriate for this platform. This is not, or, you know, this is something I want to share here or not. But. You know, in order to establish yourself as unique, Matt Rolnick: Yep, yep. Ross Romano: you do have to go a little bit beyond the bare minimum. Matt Rolnick: Right, right, right. And by the way, we're all humans and we've all had stories and we're all trying to navigate professionally and personally, but all of us are good at some things. So some people might be very good at, you know, the way that they organize their emails or set up their weeks or things like that. And there's other people that might be very good at conflict resolution and how to deal with different personalities or, and I feel like there's a way to share a story where you're not sharing secrets about your company or [00:17:00] things like that, But there's ways to share, Hey, this is what I've done that's worked for me. You can come off, you don't have to come off as an expert. You can just humble saying, here's some steps that I, you know, I'd recommend. I feel like those are stories people want to know. Like how, what's a better way to interview or how do you. Try to if you want to, you know, level up to the next management route. What steps did you do? Or how did you do if you have a challenging situation? What steps did you take to improve it? How do you negotiate yourself? Whatever it may be. You know, there are things. I mean, right now, people are learning a lot about AI and, you know, what's working, what isn't working, but that's like a, that's a hot topic that people could talk about more if they're interested, but it's, you know, you know, I'm still a believer that most people get a little nervous or apprehensive. What should I share? If there's something that you have, some type of extra interest, expertise, experience, you can share that. [00:18:00] I mean, you want to make it more about people following you than you. I see too many people, it's too self promotional. And not to say that doing some of that's not a bad idea. I mean, we're all there, we all have our own self interest in things that we're trying to promote, but if you're helping elevate others, promoting others, or sharing thoughts or ideas that can help others, That's when people are naturally, in my opinion, gonna start gravitating more towards you. Ross Romano: Yeah, there's some some patience and that's what the consistency is about. I mean, you can promote something that you want people to like. to connect with once they care about you. Once they're interested in what you have to say, then they'll say, Oh, I want to support this because this person's been valuable to me. This person has helped me in X, Y, Z ways. sometimes in ways they don't even know. And now when there's something that I can support of [00:19:00] theirs, I want to do that. And but it requires showing up and being there. And I do think, you know, some of the reasons why some people don't embrace online, you know, social networking is just an extension of the reasons why some people don't embrace. You know, networking outside of social, right? And again it's maybe a miss. It's an incomplete understanding of what it can be. It's making me think of, you know, one time I was helping, you know, to plan a a class reunion for my university. And I had floated the idea of maybe separately from the more The exclusively social event, right? If there were a, you know, a little more of a networking event at a different time, right? And it was the feedback was that they had done that in the past. And people didn't like it because [00:20:00] they didn't like having to leave and put on a suit and come back. And I'm thinking, well, why do you have to wear a suit? It's 2000. Like most people don't dress like that anyway. And it's not a job fair. It's a place to get to know people and to have, an environment where you can have conversations with people about professional things about what you do for work. You don't have to be looking for something from anybody. No, you don't have to worry that people are expecting something of you. It's a place to form relationships and get to know people and build a network. But I think most people Think of it as being very transactional and inauthentic, right? Okay, I have to go and put on a certain uniform to be in this room. And because that's what I'm expected to look like. And I think the same thing carries over to a social network, particularly like a, you know, a LinkedIn [00:21:00] where it's more professional focused, where People, you know, there's some people who just can't quite get past the thought that everything is transactional and everybody's always looking for something from me or I need to be looking for something from them. And you know, that takes away from the joy, I think, of being there. Matt Rolnick: Well, yeah, you know what? It's interesting, you know, my wife she does real estate in Chicagoland And she's not as extroverted necessarily as me But once she meets somebody, people love her and she's very personal She loves helping people things like that But the idea of going to a networking event It is not necessarily top of her list, but and I just say, you know, nothing, just get, the more you get to know people, the more you in conversations, the more you know, there's organically ways that you can share ideas or help or get people to think it, In the long run, you're going to, more opportunities will come about, and [00:22:00] every event she, every time after she goes to, she's always glad she went. But she, there's almost like a little anxiety when first like going to meet a group, especially if she doesn't know most people. But I think that's true in person networking events for a lot of people. And I think that's true for, social marketing or social branding or posting content. You know, there could be an awkwardness, sure, but I still think the pros outweigh the cons, even for people that are introverted. It's like, You know, it's just I still believe it's good to get out there and you start attracting people that are like minded in certain ways, too so but kind of going what you said it's like, you know people Don't you know a lot of people don't want to put in the effort and i'm realistic too I've consulted a lot of people that You know, sometimes it's like pulling teeth. They're really, they have a real aversion, and I think you've got to be honest with that too. And the people that have a real aversion, I'm like, [00:23:00] okay, in once every three months, I made, I'll try to find some compromise that they can commit to or get their arms around or things like that. But I've worked with others that first did not like the idea of it, and once they got some extra feedback or connected with people or saw benefits they didn't necessarily expect. You know, they really started to appreciate it and they started seeing the value and they Something that they had guards up is all of a sudden they open, you know, arms wide open with Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And I, there's value. I mean, I think becoming more comfortable with a lot of these things a good starting point is get involved when you're riding high, right? I mean, in other words, I you know, you're more comfortable with the dynamics when you're, when you have a mentality of using your advantages. Yeah. to benefit others, right? I mean, I think people who have people who [00:24:00] are just dead set against asking for help when they need it are more likely in my experience to be the people who were less likely to have helped others. when they had opportunities to, right? I mean, people who are used to helping others don't see anything bad about that. And then when they're in a position where they need some help, they don't have this feeling of, well, I'm not, I can't ask for help. That's such a terrible thing. And in any kind of, you know, whether it's any kind of endeavor, volunteering a social endeavor or professional that it's. It's, you know, you're just go and get involved and build up a network and that you can just do authentically and you're not worried about. What's the call to action here? Or, you know, what's the outcome? It's just getting to know people. It's building relationships and it becomes an organic thing that it's really fluid. I think in careers, as far as when we're, you know, what [00:25:00] position we're in, how we're doing, right, things can change quickly or you can decide, hey, I'm really interested in getting to know about something new. But you know, for those who are kind of resisting it again. The best time to do it is when you don't, is when you don't think you need it. Matt Rolnick: Well, that's true. Well, you said something interesting to Ross you said about you know it's true when things are going well with my work or I feel like i'm accomplishing more or whatever, you know You're you may be in a stronger position where you feel more comfortable posting but where? You When I first started really embracing LinkedIn is right when the pandemic hit when I actually got furloughed from Groupon once the pandemic hit like The lion's share of our department got furloughed and that was an ego bruise That was really tough, but I realized I had some more time on my hands and you know I just started thinking about like restaurants and like what are they gonna do? And it's could they have their chef? Do little zooms and share recipe ideas, or could they have [00:26:00] staff personality share more, or could they do meal plans or delivery? I had all these ideas and I was like, you know what? I don't have a boss at this point. You know what? I'm just going to share my ideas and just thought, and I ended up getting a lot of. positive feedback. So I really, and I had a mentality that, you know what, ideally, I'm looking for that next job or what I'm going to do next. And I had that insecurity, but I was like, in the meantime, what value can I bring others? And I want to do it confidently. I want to share and just get people to think, especially because it was such a wild west at that time. But I believe that you can be effective when you're in a position, as you said, strength and riding high, but I also think in times when you're vulnerable, you can really connect with people, too. There's a guy who I love following on LinkedIn that I've gotten to be friends with and talk to. His name's Dheeraj, and he's in the UK, and and he shared on LinkedIn he talked about his divorce. He talked about, you know, trying to start consulting. He started all these things [00:27:00] that most people wouldn't share, but he shared it with business lessons in life. And he connected with a lot of people. I mean, and people because he was so vulnerable and shared his story. His wins and his losses people related to him as a human being, they liked his advice, and that's why he's been able to grow his consulting practice. So, so anyway, but I do think there's ways of connecting people, you know, when you're struggling, as well as when you're riding Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. You never, I mean, I, when I, a few years ago when I started my consulting business, I think the first three, Client inquiries I had, I referred to somebody else and, you know, I could I was trying to build a business. I could use clients at the time, but I knew somebody who I felt could serve them better. I felt that was the right thing to do. That was going to benefit them the most. And then eventually at times when I didn't expect it and from people who I didn't [00:28:00] necessarily expect, I had things referred to me. And, but. You know, but I never would feel if my mentality was always toward service and saying, well, what's the, who can help them the best? Is it me? Is it somebody else? What's going to be? I would also never feel bad or like I couldn't ask somebody else at a time when I was looking for clients. Hey, do you know anybody or, you know, if you see anybody make a fault because It's all part of the process, right? I did my part. I, you know, I, and and it's, and the world, no matter what you're in, inside a corporation, you're an entrepreneur, a solopreneur of, you know, a whatever. If you view the world collaboratively, you can go a lot further than when you view everything as a competition or a zero sum game. Matt Rolnick: yeah. Well, I love the idea of what you said about looking at the world collaboratively, and I think that's really important, [00:29:00] and one piece of advice I'd give to, you know, whether it's a Gen Z, Gen X, you know, Millennials, Boomers not to burn bridges, I mean, because the world's closer than people realize, especially within industries or things like that, and you just never know who could be Your next boss, your next client, your next partner. I mean, there's so many people that i've seen they leave a job and they think They're done with that and they've moved on to a next chapter, but somewhere something some person some idea some project lingers on and it's like They afterwards they tell me I kind of wish I would have left on better terms or stayed in touch with things are giving people a little more of the benefits of the doubt or being a little more collaborative with my approach You Ross Romano: Yeah. How do you cut through the noise in a, in any kind of network really, right? If you're in sales you know, customers have a lot of different people trying to sell to them if you're on the online platform. Sometimes it can feel like everybody's doing the same thing [00:30:00] or they're talking about the same thing and, you know, and okay. What's the point of me doing it? Or I feel like I got started and nobody's paying attention. What does it take to cut through the noise? Matt Rolnick: So, there's a few things I've done that I think kind of help cut the noise. One is I, sometimes I'll throw in a little humor. I think humor's an underestimated thing in the workplace and professionally. I've been fairly effective, what you're doing, asking other people, you know, sometimes I don't have great ideas for content, but, I'll reach out to others and I keep making bigger swings. So, you know, I like talking about corporate culture or employee engagement events or or LinkedIn. You know, there was a woman that her name's Hala Taha. She's got over 200, 000 LinkedIn followers. I asked to interview her, posted on LinkedIn, you know, it really elevated my content and she's, you know, does She's the podcast princess. She's interviewed, like, Gary Vaynerchuk and Matthew McConaughey. I mean, she's doing some amazing things, but I was able, in [00:31:00] certain ways, by interviewing her, it helped elevate or break through the noise. And I find, too, that any time I can be the, I can recap or be the voice of something. I once went to an Adobe conference and all the speakers, I, you know, I made sure I wrote down their names. I found them on LinkedIn. I did a recap and I basically tagged each one of them and talked about each topic they had. Well, the next thing you know is I've got, you know, dozens of employees or hundreds of, from Adobe checking out my content and some engaging in things like that. It just strengthened that relationship. But I cut, I mean, I cut through the noise. of having another company like Adobe paying attention to me, liking what I'm posting, because I'm sharing my perspective on this conference. And I would say, hey, I'm not using AI, I might not have everything right, but this is, these were my takeaways, and this is what I thought was interesting, and shared it into a relevant business message. So here's, I elevated other people, [00:32:00] a company that's, you know, a very well known company, and in a unique type of format. And tagged, you know, the people that's a way that helped me stand out. I do some videos. I'd make them short I work with this company market scale that helps me make them just look more professional and it's a real user friendly way So that's been ways of helping my content kind of think break through the noise a little bit I have found this but I do a lot of different things. But I, sometimes I try to push the envelope and try to encourage people to talk about things. And a lot, and I found polling really interesting. Like, I, anything that I find curious, like, how many days a week do you want to work from home versus an office? So, you know, and get people to poll. And I even ask other questions, like, and I'm improvising this a little bit, or this was exactly what I said, you know, would you rather make 200, 000 a year and work 80 hours a week, or 110, 000 and work, you know, 45, or 80, 000 and work 20, [00:33:00] or so, I mean, but just questions, getting people to think about, trying to get a pulse of things and that was a way to get, break through the noise, but also, I would do these polls often that it were really quick, easy contents that gets great engagement because people much more prefer to vote on a poll than like or comment. But if I ever had to do about corporate culture or employee engagement or events, which are my common themes, um, I was establishing myself more as a thought leader with it, and getting engagement, and people liking viewing the polls to see, you know, what other people answered these questions. So, so those are some ideas to kind of break through. I'm rambling, I'm sharing the whole kitchen sink, but LinkedIn makes it very easy to write articles as well. So, I mean, you can get a really attractive graphic to put in the back, you can just type something up in a few minutes, and basically, boom, you've got an article. And, by the way, I think it's fine to collaborate with AI to help you [00:34:00] with ideas with things, as long as you're writing it or things like that. But I've gotten ideas on, hey, I'm thinking about writing about this topic. Like, how do you get people interested? You know, to attend an event more than, or what's the pros and cons of in person versus virtual or things like that. And then I get some good topics and then I'll write it, but I've collaborated with that. And it's just, you know, with AI, you can be much more productive and give you some good ideas with content as well. So hopefully I answered your question, but I do think there's lots of ways to break through the noise. I think the biggest though, is what's your personality and what's ideas you have. And. And get it out there, which easier said than done, but just like my friend, his name is Noel Berkman about dyslexia and business strategies and how he used it for his superpower. That's something that's a, in my opinion it shows your vulnerability, it shows your expertise, it shares solutions and it's connecting with people and helping people. (ad here) Ross Romano: Yeah. I think in, [00:35:00] you know, it's true that. You have to make a new noise, right? I mean, if there's 10 people in one room all playing guitars and you come in playing a guitar nobody's going to hear it. But if you come in with a saxophone I think social media, this is definitely true from top to bottom. First is better than best. You know, there's a real first mover advantage platform wise, like look at how durable. Twitter is, for example, Twitter slash X right now, even when a lot of people. Over the past couple of years, haven't really, there's things they're unhappy with and there's other platforms that have launched they're not getting really traction, there's a lot of advantage to being first, whether or not the others are better or not, who knows, but I don't think it's really going to matter. You know, you have to have something different. Same thing on social media that. You referenced, you know, summarizing people's presentations. [00:36:00] Somebody else could say, Oh, I like that. I'm going to summarize it too. And they could do a better summary than you, but they're, you know, if people are already saying, well, no, we already know that Matthew is being the guy who does that. You have to come up with your own thing and your own voice. That's the challenge, but that also maybe is part of that could dissipate some of that intimidation to say, look, you don't have, you shouldn't do what everybody else is doing and just worry about, well, can I do it better than they're doing it? You have to do something different, come up with your own thing, your own voice, your own approach, become known for that. You know, it's known in some of those circles as category creation, right? What, what is going to be my unique category? It, and it doesn't need to be from whole cloth, but what's your angle or spin or twist on what's out there that you are going to be known for instead of just competing with again, like exactly what everybody else is doing.[00:37:00] Matt Rolnick: Well, you know what? It's really interesting you share that, Ross, because you know, you talk about looking at the world collaboratively, and I mean, and one thing is, I think there's so much content out there, and there's, everything's competitive and I don't disagree on looking at what's out there and finding your own niche. When I took this, I took one of Hala, this woman that I mentioned a LinkedIn course, and the first thing she had us do was we looked at, she asked us each to find five or six other profiles on LinkedIn. We kind of aspire to. And so that gave us a framework to look at what we liked, what we didn't like, but at least something as a guiding Oh a North Star kind of. And I liked that. And you know, you mentioned like, Hey, if you like guitar and saxophone, I think find your niche. But let's say you love guitar and you like po, I mean. You know, I love LinkedIn and I realize there's so many other LinkedIn consultants out there, but what I decided to do is I'd collaborate. I've probably interviewed on my own LinkedIn. 15 other LinkedIn experts [00:38:00] that in certain ways we could all compete with if we're bought as a consultant But I realized anyone who wanted to work with me knows me They trust me and I'm only gonna learn more and my audience is only gonna learn more and it's gonna help me Strengthen some of my blind spots or things. I don't know So I've taken a very collaborative approach with other LinkedIn experts, and I've decided to immerse myself in the space and connect with them. And it's actually because of that, it's grown my following more. And some of these LinkedIn influencers that have 50, 000, 200, 000, whatever followers are now liking my content, and they know that I'm there as an advocate. And I'm looking at partnerships and things like that. So I look at things with a very collaborative approach, but so, so, I mean, that's one way of looking at things, but that's been a benefit to me when I look at more of the world is more as abundance than competitive, I feel like more opportunities grow. My, I start to get luckier. Ross Romano: We're getting close to the end here, but what's your [00:39:00] best tip for somebody who is just getting started and wants to. Dive in. Matt Rolnick: So, you know, my best tip would be you know, kind of that first tip I mentioned with Holland, look at other people that you kind of aspire to be like, where do you, where would you want to be in a year, two years or things from now? So that gives you that. I'm going to combine this with a bunch of few tips, but, you know, maybe write out a couple goals. I mean, it always when you write something, you know, it increases your chance of happening. But taking that first step, you know, dip your toe in the water, take one chance on posting something that's a little different. uncomfortable for you, but think about something that resonates with you and something that, that if you asked a friend or a previous colleague, is this kind of interesting? Yeah. And they'd say, yeah, I mean, write and post about that. I mean, and have a little fun. Don't take yourself too seriously, but. That would be my advice is just get that first post out there and you can be open to be like, Hey, [00:40:00] I normally don't use LinkedIn or this social media or Twitter or whatever, X to this challenge, but I wanted to share this because I thought others could benefit from it. I mean, that would be my recommendation. Ross Romano: Perfect. Matthew, I know you're also a Udemy instructor and you've had a few courses there. What are the courses about? What do you teach? What's that all about? Matt Rolnick: Well, that's, you know, that became, I was approached by a company called UXL that puts together courses on Udemy and they saw my LinkedIn content and they liked my content and they said, Hey, we'd like to put a course around you. And the first one was around entrepreneurship. I think, I mean, between the at least two courses, I had a third that's not active on there as much but over 135, 000 students have participated. So that's pretty wild. But but the first one's on entrepreneurship and kind of share some basic one on one tips on, you know, how to be an entrepreneur and best tips and practices. And then the other one the I collaborated with another woman Renee who and it's on persuasive writing. And and so they, the course [00:41:00] themselves, this UXL shared with me a bunch of content and I talked a little bit of mine, but shared kind of tips with it, but they gave me a lot of guidance with it. And I'm working on a third one. I'm working on another course right now on relationship management that I'm really excited about. So hopefully you know, sometime towards the latter half of 2024, that's going to be out. Ross Romano: Excellent. Anything else that listeners should check out? Where's the best place to connect? We'll certainly put your, the link to your LinkedIn profile here below. But anything else you'd like to direct folks to? Matt Rolnick: No, you know what again, they can always obviously go to my LinkedIn, you know, Matthew Rolnick. You know, my book, Find Your Yay, that's on Amazon. It's a short read that just gives some basic tips on growing your brand, strengthening relationships and finding your voice. But I'd say, but I always like to form strategic partnerships. I've got a new opportunity brewing, pun is intended so if anyone who follows me by the time they probably watch this podcast, they'll at least see something new that I'll be working on that I'm super excited [00:42:00] about. And but yeah, that's the way anybody can find me. I always like to form partnerships and collaborations. Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, yeah, if you're listening out there, if you're interested in this, these topics and this conversation Connect with Matthew, we'll put his information below where you can learn more and connect directly. Please also, if you have not already, do subscribe to the Authority for more author interviews like this. And if you're a listener and you have found the series interesting, helpful. We certainly really appreciate if you go over to Apple or Spotify, or if you listen on another platform that has ratings and reviews give us the highest five star review. But it really does help. It helps the new listeners to find out about the show and to check it out. So please do that or head to bpodcast. network to learn about the rest of our shows. Matthew, thanks so much for coming on. Matt Rolnick: Thanks Ross, definitely a pleasure talking with you. [00:43:00]