Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.
Today's guest is Mike Kaeding, a pioneer in social media and LinkedIn, recognized the importance of attention and engagement in driving business success. Inspired by the packed restaurants of Gertner Ramsey in Las Vegas, Mike understood the need to capture attention to fuel his own business. This realization became the catalyst for his groundbreaking work in leveraging social media to enhance business outcomes.
In this episode Mike Kaeding is joining us. Get ready to dive into the world of LinkedIn and social media as Mike shares his journey and valuable insights. Discover how Mike went from being a real estate developer to becoming a LinkedIn expert with a thriving online presence. He'll reveal the key to capturing attention and engagement, the importance of delivering value to your audience, and the power of consistently improving your content by just 1%. Plus, learn how to overcome the fear of trying, stand out in a crowded space, and keep pushing forward.
Notable Quotes
- "There's another kind of currency that most businesses fail to really understand, and that's the attention." - [Mike Kaeding]
- "Don't think your first thing out of the gate is perfect or right or good. It isn't. It's the iteration that helps you get to where you need to be." - [Mike Kaeding]
- "This may seem trite, but the reality is the number one thing that stops you from being successful is you. It's your own mind." - [Mike Kaeding]
- "The people who quit too soon are the ones who always miss out." - [Jonathan Green]
- "People are in their situation because of their choices. They're not willing to put in the effort and be a little bit uncomfortable and go outside their comfort zone."- [Jonathan Green]
Connect with Mike Kaeding
Website: https://www.norhart.com/
Connect with Jonathan Green
Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.
Today's guest is Mike Kaeding, a pioneer in social media and LinkedIn, recognized the importance of attention and engagement in driving business success. Inspired by the packed restaurants of Gertner Ramsey in Las Vegas, Mike understood the need to capture attention to fuel his own business. This realization became the catalyst for his groundbreaking work in leveraging social media to enhance business outcomes.
In this episode Mike Kaeding is joining us. Get ready to dive into the world of LinkedIn and social media as Mike shares his journey and valuable insights. Discover how Mike went from being a real estate developer to becoming a LinkedIn expert with a thriving online presence. He'll reveal the key to capturing attention and engagement, the importance of delivering value to your audience, and the power of consistently improving your content by just 1%. Plus, learn how to overcome the fear of trying, stand out in a crowded space, and keep pushing forward.
Notable Quotes
- "There's another kind of currency that most businesses fail to really understand, and that's the attention." - [Mike Kaeding]
- "Don't think your first thing out of the gate is perfect or right or good. It isn't. It's the iteration that helps you get to where you need to be." - [Mike Kaeding]
- "This may seem trite, but the reality is the number one thing that stops you from being successful is you. It's your own mind." - [Mike Kaeding]
- "The people who quit too soon are the ones who always miss out." - [Jonathan Green]
- "People are in their situation because of their choices. They're not willing to put in the effort and be a little bit uncomfortable and go outside their comfort zone."- [Jonathan Green]
Connect with Mike Kaeding
Website: https://www.norhart.com/
Connect with Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green: From real estate developer to LinkedIn expert with today's special guest, Mike Kaeding, on today's episode of the Serve No Master podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Descript. Every book, podcast and YouTube video that I publish is transcribed by Descript. I've used all of the competitors and nobody comes close to their quality, And the price is the lowest in the business as well. If you wanna speed up production and grow your online business, go to servenomaster.comfront/descript right now.
Announcer: Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master podcast where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep, presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author, Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.
Jonathan Green: I'm very interested. I mentioned this before the show, but I wanna say right now, so many people claim to be LinkedIn experts where they demonstrate these huge followings on LinkedIn. Oh, I have 50,000 followers, 6,000 followers, and no one's responded to their content. And to me, I care more about engagement. Like, what good is a podcast if no one's listening? I care about listeners, not downloads. So I'm really interested in how you kind of made that jump and where your interest in social media and specifically LinkedIn kinda began. Tell me your origin story.
Mike Kaeding: Yeah. For the origin story of social media and LinkedIn, one of the things I realized, in the last few years is that a lot of businesses are focused on the dollars and cents of a business, which makes sense. There's another kind of currency that most businesses fail to really understand, and that's the attention. At least they may understand it, but they don't put it into practice. And If you look at certain businesses like Gertner Ramsey and his Hell's Kitchen restaurants, he is always booked out. If you go to his restaurants in Las Vegas And you go right across the aisle, same casino, same quality of staff, same beautiful location. And the other neighboring restaurants with amazing Food, they don't have nearly the number of people in that restaurant. And so I started realizing at a deep level that we needed to capture attention and engagement In order to really fuel our business, so that was sort of the spark of it.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. I think that's really interesting because what I've noticed is he comes across my feeds all the time. There's always either someone responding to a Hell's Kitchen or Nightmare Hotels episode or someone who's comparing the UK versus the American versions or he throws shows in my TikTok feed showing really quick recipes, which I think is a very smart idea because we usually think of, like, restaurant cooking. Some takes a long time, so it's something you can never learn at home. So he's figured out these processes to always be basically on your feet. He's always somewhere. So I think that's very interesting because a lot of businesses, they only think about exactly that the customer, they never think about, oh, wanna be in someone's mind. So I really like what you're saying.
Jonathan Green: So as a real estate developer, someone who does something that usually is kind of seen as something that's like boardrooms and backrooms, not very front facing. Did you start to create your presence or create your identity?
Mike Kaeding: Yeah. It was quite a process. It took a long time to figure out what made sense for us. But I think the key insight that I've learned over time Is it doesn't the algorithm doesn't really matter. What really matters is you need to drive value to the person on the other end. Because on something like a short, for example, they can flick right to the next person instantly. So unless you're driving value within the 1st couple of seconds on anything that you're doing, They've passed you by. They've ignored you.
Mike Kaeding: And I know a lot of people fail on social media as they think, well, I'm gonna post what's interesting to me or what's going on in my life right now. That's not Truly bringing value to the other person on the other end. And so for us on LinkedIn, what what really grew our account Originally was recognizing that value. And for us in in the early years, we focused on inspirational quotes, and then that was the hook that got people involved, especially on LinkedIn where they're business focused. And then after they got looked past that hook, we'd have content that was written in a way that was very easy to read, engaging, you know, only 1 or 2 sentences per line, kind of easy to see on a smartphone. And then we would test out different kinds of content. And so what you'd find Is that certain kinds of content, certain kinds of things over time would do better than other things, and you would slowly evolve what you're doing. You know, 1 person I look Up to just in general on social platforms is mister beast.
Mike Kaeding: And one of the things he talks a lot about is with anything that you do, and he's in the world of video, but even post, Try to make your post just 1% better. 1% a little bit better for the person on the other end. And if you do that well, consistently over time, will start to gain an audience.
Jonathan Green: It's very interesting to think of the spectrum that mister v's advice could actually be valuable in the business world because You're exactly right. Like, so much content is repetitive. It's very hard to get to the noise. Like, I can tell you, I get messaged on this podcast by so many guests, and they all have the same story. Oh, I left the corporate world to start my own business, and now I'm the CEO and redo it our business on Instagram. But it's not unique. Right? Everyone has the same story, so it's hard to stand out. Even when I'm trying to be a guest on other shows, I'm always thinking, what can I do that's different? Because, yeah, I had a different job too, and then I started my own business, but I know that's not interesting anymore because it's become too common of a story. So finding your voice and that idea of Just being a little bit better each time. So many of us, we want it to work on the 1st try. My 1st video needs to be go viral. My 1st try needs to work, And I don't want anything to not work. So there's this fear of trying and then people quit so soon. So how did you get past that phase where you're trying things and not everything's working.
Mike Kaeding: Oh, it's so normal. You know, I think we're born not knowing how to do things. Right? We can't walk. We can't talk. We can't And we can't do anything, but something happens as we get older. We start to think that whenever we start something, it's gotta be good. Otherwise, it looks negatively upon us. We forget the natural journey of growing to become something, to be better at something. And then really getting comfortable in that uncomfortableness is very important to being and then having the tenacity to keep going forward. And for example, on YouTube, we started a channel for my daughter. So started literally at ground 0. We had 0 subscribers, and we've been slowly growing that over the last few months. In the very first video, it only had, like, a 100 views. Right? For a lot of people, that's like, oh, this is tough. But we're just focused on getting it better and better and better. So our latest video, which hasn't come out yet, the Basic idea of it to try to stand out and be different is we asked, what would a 5 year old do with a full size dump truck with her candy? And so we actually filled the dump truck full of candy. We drove down the neighborhood. We gave it out to the residents, and then we ended up giving it away to Food Shelf, but that ended up making the radio. We were on the radio this weekend. We were on the newspaper, and now the TV has actually wanted to bring her on different TV stations. But the power of just Creating a really cool, fun, compelling, and different message is really what fuels you to move forward.
Jonathan Green: I'm starting to see the mister and the beast influence As I can see exactly about anything with a dump truck, I'm already getting excited. So that's very interesting because a lot of people try to model this reason to do exactly what he's doing, but your own spin is very interesting. In the same way, I'm always trying to try different ideas of my own kids because they love watching Tiktok. Like, how about we start making some Tiktok? So I like what you're saying a lot Because there is this challenge that, oh, my 1st video failed. I'm a failure. We often have this connection, and it happens there, but it still happens to me sometimes. Right? Sometimes something doesn't work and you feel bad and you don't wanna get back up. But how do you keep going? And how long does it take you to go from ideas to something started working. Like, how long was that actual desert period?
Mike Kaeding: It takes so long. I mean, sometimes you can luck out and maybe it happens over the course of a couple of months, But, generally, it's years. In fact, on our podcast, I recently interviewed the originator and executive producer of Batman. Just an amazing guy. His name is Michael Ooslin. He owns the movie rights to that. He's done the Lego movie, national treasure, and he talks about how it took him ten Years from his idea of wanting to bring Batman to the movie and having the movie rights to the point that I actually got to that level. And he was rejected so many times over and over and over again. And his whole message and the message I wanna share with you with your audience Is that it really does take a long time. Right? These people who think it's just a couple of months to massive success. It's just not the truth. You gotta be willing to put the energy and effort into it over the long haul.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. There's this problem we have where we compare someone's on stage presence to our own backstage. And we go, oh, Mike's first idea worked. Like, people who follow me something, like, oh, my Jonathan's first idea worked right out the gate. It worked. And And it's like, no. I lived in my mom's basement for a year, then I lived my friend's couch in a studio apartment for a year and a half. And that that's two and a half years, I don't know if I could do that now, now that I've got 4 kids in my forties. But at 20 nines, like, I'll do whatever it takes. And we sometimes forget, especially now because, Yeah. Some influencers, it works right at the gate. They shoot their 1st TikTok, especially if they're pretty, which I'm not. So regular looking guy, so I have to do that extra mile. Right? Like, I have to provide good content. I can't just dance, but we think it should be so easy. It's always interesting to me when people read half of one of my books or they just watch 1 blog post, they go, it didn't work. Well, how long did you try? I tried 2 days. We go to college for 4 years. Right? And those of us who pay attention, we've been 4 years there, and then we hope to get like an entry level job at the end. But we, we kind of hit 25 or 30, we go, oh, it should be the 1st try. It should always work. So it's an important lesson, I think, for people that you're mentioning here that you have to be willing to go to the desert because the people who keep going are the ones who win. Like, the people who quit too soon are the ones who always miss out. That's why there's so much opportunity. I was just talking about my business partners today. We've had so many clients who I give them a list of customers. I give them here's a 1000 customers that bought your book. Here's their email addresses. And then a month later, how many times did you email them? Oh, not yet. I'm waiting. Well, you just threw money away, but they, it breaks my heart. How many times should I mail more? Whatever you're thinking more than that. It's such an opportunity to have an audience and they throw it away. And I realized sometimes it's like, well, people are in their situation because of their choices. They're not willing to put in the effort and be a little bit uncomfortable and go outside their comfort zone. So I think it's important for people to realize that it doesn't matter what type of business you're building. You need to build these presences in different businesses. Like, if you only have 1 presence, like all these people are on Vine and Vine went out of business. What are they gonna do? Some of them made it to TikTok, but not all of them. So I think it's really important. I think this is very interesting. So a lot of people come to me. I get message from people that are LinkedIn experts all the time because I have a large profile. The reason I have a large profile is one of my friends used to run a course where he would customize people's LinkedIn profiles after they get fired to help them get back to work. And he had hundreds of 1,000 people go through that program. And in the training webinar, He used my profile as an example because we were friends. And so all these people would see the video add me. I was like, we're just friends. I'm not in the LinkedIn business, but I have this massive number of connections because of this. And I see a lot of people on LinkedIn struggle to get past the followers phase. They have 5,000 followers or more, which know that's a lot more than I have. I only have a couple 100 followers. I don't even know why I have followers. I'm not very active on LinkedIn, but it's very hard to get people on LinkedIn to leave a comment or to respond to a video. Even they click the like people are less interactive than they are other platforms. So how do you push through that additional barrier that makes LinkedIn a little bit more challenging because people kind of see it business platform.
Mike Kaeding: Yeah. I think the key is again, delivering a message that's really resonates with them. One one example of messages that tend to resonate is Ones that are authentic to who you are, authentic to your business, being open and transparent about something, And that motivates or inspires. It gives the reader a sense of, of a boost in their own life. So we did a post recently around Sure. It was around Michael Oostlund, I think, and the fact that he took 10 years in his journey, kinda showing a little bit of my journey as well in that post. And people will On there, like, this is what I needed to hear, that it isn't easy, that that it does take this time because they were in the doldrums themselves. And so really understanding your audience And the people out there and delivering some meaningful value to them. That's what's critical. I see sometimes people do things that are link Beatty or like click baity and comment baity and stuff like that. And I just think that's so shortsighted. Maybe you can get the algorithm to kind of maximize you for a little bit, But the people that are truly succeeding on LinkedIn are the ones that are building an authentic connection with their audience.
Jonathan Green: That's very interesting because most of content that when I go to LinkedIn, I update my profile every once in a while and I'm tweaking something. Most of the content that I see is not interesting to me. I think that a lot of people are suffering from main character syndrome where they think I'm the most important thing. Like, my biography is the most important of my stories. I work with a lot of nonfiction authors, and the first thing I tell them is nobody reads biography. In the last 10 years, I won I went read 1 biography and it was patent. I said, if you win World War 3, I'll read your biography too. Right? Most people very few people read biographies. It's the least common genre. What people really wanna read is the story of how you got there. So your story can be there as long as it's Supporting a point as long as supporting a journey. So I have some personal stories in my books, but it's the least important part. Most important part is what I'm teaching. The interesting part supports that, But a lot of people think that we see this all the time on these social media platforms saying, oh, whatever I'm interested is so important, and my interest changed when I talk about changes. Right? Like, I was surfing for a long time. Now I windsurf. Now I play guitar. Yeah. I have guitars in the background, but I can't change my content about that because not everyone is surfing's into guitars. It changes. So what's your advice for people that are trying to find their voice? Because you say it's that same advice you get when you're single. Just be yourself. I don't know how to be myself. If that, like, if that advice worked, but it I'm already trying that it's not working. I need to be someone else. I always thought that when I got that advice. And so Sometimes when you say be authentic, they're not sure what to talk about because either they tell fake stories or they tell stuff that's too they overshare, and they miscalibrated in the wrong direction. Right? It's like, suddenly, I'm gonna tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me. How do people find authenticity without being Too guarded and oversharing too much too early.
Mike Kaeding: I think the key is to put something out there and then iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate. Right? Because you don't know exactly what that Pitcher is. I will say though that like mr. Beast, for example, he talks about how in a lot of his videos, he was very over animated for a while, and they actually found that it was more when he was quote, unquote more himself, it is more normal kind of actions on the on the platform, but you don't know exactly what that is for you. So I think the first step is put your first 1st post out there. When I did that, I was terrified. Now the reality is no one's gonna read it, or very few people are gonna watch it. So even if you screw up and it's Terrible. That's okay. And then you do 2nd post. You cut maybe 1 person commented or or 1 person interacted with you. Maybe it was your mom. But do you you hear the feedback that they give you and and tweak it a little bit, make it a little bit better, and then constantly be tweaking, improving, and updating. And it's that small iteration over time is which makes a big difference. You know, there's this interesting study where they took 2 groups of people to make clay pots. The 1st group was told to make the perfect Clay pot the 1st time. The 2nd group of people was just told to make a ton of different clay pots as fast as they could. What they found is the Hurst, the group that did the single clay pot, they created, well, okay clay pots. They were better than the 1st of the 2nd group, But the 2nd group, the one that made a lot of clay pots, they made far superior clay pots at the end. I think the key message is that don't think your first thing out of the gate is perfect or right or good. It isn't. It's the iteration that helps you get to where you need to be.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. I think that's really good Because it's only by doing things a lot of times. Sometimes you'd be like, wow, your lighting is so good. I've put hundreds of hours into lighting this room. Like, I have so many lights that aren't on right now. I had too many lights for a while. It was too bright. Now I still have to go and change the red balance on this light because my friend Better. I was like, oh, no. There's 2 hours of my I'm gonna dive into it, but people see and think it's the first try, and they're afraid to have a bad thing. That's so important is that we forget. We never look at the beginning of someone's journey. Now a lot of people delete their journeys. Like, if you see on Instagram, a lot of models who are doing really well, they only have seem to have 50 posts. There's no history because anything that underperforms, they delete. You get to that point and you see a lot of actors never talk about certain movies they were in at the beginning of their career. We forget that they did commercials first, but It is part of the process to do things that don't work. I still have ideas that don't work. I wish I stopped, but it never goes away. We're so afraid. I think that we've really shifted to a place where we're worried about being judged. Oh, if I make a video that's not good, people will think I'm less. And what I find is there's almost no interaction between real life and social media. The the Venn diagrams don't even touch. There's only 1 person on any of my social networks. My sister posts pictures of her vacations with her kids. That's literally the only person that I talk to from any social media platform. I've always thought it was interesting that Facebook was very tricky. They call your contacts your friends. If you're like, oh, I have 5,000 friends. And I was writing about this yesterday. I was like, well, how many of those friends would actually come to your funeral or just write something on your Facebook wall? Right? It's like, nope. Can you just show up? Let's not do the Facebook thing for one day, but we have these artificial relationships and we don't realize, no, it's So separate. It's okay to post things that don't work because you're gonna find yourself. People don't really judge you for trying as much as they judge you for not trying. Like
Mike Kaeding: It's so true. You know, I I work with a lot of different coaches, and they help with very specific things of our business and and my social accounts and what have you. But all of these elite groups, almost every single one of them, they have incredible people in the group, incredible coaches, world class people, and they always Have a mindset coach. This may seem trite, but the reality is the number one thing that stops you from being successful is you. It's your own mind, and it it drives me nuts too. For myself, for example, we were on the radio this this weekend. It was the first time my daughter Has had a big presence. You know, I've been on many shows before, but for me, I was a bit terrified because here I am within a few hours giving my daughter PR training. She's only 5 years old. And, you know, it's not it's good, but it's not perfect. And so afterward, my mind wants to go to the place of like, Oh, shoot. That could have been better. I could have done it better. If I done this differently, that would have been better. I wonder what the host is thinking. That's where my mind's at. The reality is nobody else's mind is there. Right? The host has moved on. Everything is fine. Everyone is okay with things, but it's your own mind that you get into that pulls you back and holds you back.
Jonathan Green: Yeah. It's really interesting because throughout my entire career, all the things I've been at the last 20 years, there are so many people that are like they spend 2 years researching before they try their first idea. And the problem is that by the time you finish research, the stuff from the beginning is irrelevant. Right? You've already surpassed, and you're trapped eating your own tail like a snake that, oh, all the stuff I learned years ago does work. I gotta do 6 more months, and now 6 months behind again, and we get caught up in this paralysis by analysis. So good you mentioned that we want the first one to be perfect. I think that It's better if the first one's bad because there's nothing worse than if the first time is your best and every time is worse. People don't realize that's such a horrible thing. Right? Like, how many bands, their first long as a hit and everything after that is worse, they would all rather build up to that success. Right? We'd all rather peak at the end of our career than the beginning. So the thing we want is often the worst thing that can happen to you. For so many people having something go viral early on before they're ready, like, they have no funnel, they have no website built, They can't do anything with that traffic. It's wasted, and it's hard to repeat. We try to catch the wrong type of audience. So I think really important is to figure out who your actual customer is, because I've seen people build audiences of a 100000 people that have nothing in common with each other. Right? We can't you'd no advertiser wants that Because it's general traffic. It's the lowest value. They don't buy anything in common, so it's really low value, and they don't want the same things. They all like you for different reasons. So One of the things that's important, I tell this to a lot of authors, I said, you want 10% of people to hate your book because that means the other 90% will like it. Because what you don't want is for everyone to go, oh, it's okay. You don't wanna be forgettable. I would rather 90% of people go best book ever and 10% of people go, I hate that guy worst book ever. At least they all remember me.
Right? You have a clear definition. We We don't really remember the people that have no strong positions. So I think you're into 2 really good things, like figure out who your audience is gonna be. Don't be afraid to make mistakes and just Iterate and try, and small things can make a really big difference. I've shifted. I found that my videos do better if I'm standing up than sitting. Now I stand up for all of these interviews because it just causes a different effect. Right? I'd rather be sitting, be more relaxed, but small things do make a difference. Tweaking the lights, tweaking the audio, all of it comes over time. My early audio is so bad. So many bad problems. I used to have tons of videos with dogs fighting in the background. Because of where I live, there's a lot of stray dog fights, like, a lot. It would be in, like, 1 out of 3 videos would have a dog fight in the background. So and it still worked. I just said, hey, guys. I'm letting you know this is where I live. You're gonna hear something in the background. Get ready for a dog fight or possibly a chicken fight because they both happen here. And suddenly, it's okay. We're so afraid to be less than perfect because we all think I need the shiniest video with the best cameras and everything lighting perfect. And the people that start that way tend to go out of business because they spend so much money up front. Now we have to maintain it. So I think you're onto something really good there. Just take a swing and try. My last question is, like
Mike Kaeding: Yeah.
Jonathan Green: Specifically for LinkedIn, what's the best type of content? Is it pictures with text on it? Is it short blog post? Is it long blog post? Or is it video content? What have you found that's been most successful for you?
Mike Kaeding: The most successful we saw early on was images with positive quotes, something related to business, Usually about employee engagement, something along those lines because that tends to be LinkedIn's platform. On top of an article that we wrote that attached Kind of that single 1 or 2 lines per paragraph kind of content. That's what we started with. That was very successful a number of years ago, I think it's still as successful today. What we've pivoted to is a little bit more of an authentic approach where it's more just kinda like where we're at as a business, where I'm at as a human and connecting with people on a more genuine deeper level, and that's been successful for us as well. We've done the shorts, The videos on LinkedIn, they've been less successful compared to other platforms. So, yeah, that's what we're doing right
Jonathan Green: now. That's great. So for people who Love what you're doing. Like what you're talking about. Wanna see more of your stories, more of your adventures with your family, and more of your authentic engagement. Where can they find you? Where's the best place to connect with?
Mike Kaeding: Probably the best place sort of the hub is our main website, norhart.com. That's norhart.com. We also have our own podcast called 0 to Unicorn about the journey of small business growing to $1,000,000,000 enterprise.
Jonathan Green: That's amazing. That's awesome. I know people are gonna check it out. That's at norhart.com. And, of course, we'll put all the links below the video and in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here, Mike. I really
Mike Kaeding: appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
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