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Using LinkedIn for Thought Leadership | JD Gershbein
How thought leaders can use LinkedIn for increased impact.
An interview with JD Gershbein about using LinkedIn, how we communicate, and authenticity.
Today, we are joined by JD Gershbein, the Founder and CEO of Owlish Communications, a company that helps clients build a strong online presence to achieve a distinctive and competitive edge. JD is a TEDx speaker, LinkedIn expert on personal branding, and at one time a member of the Second City Improv group in Chicago!
JD takes us down his unusual path towards becoming the digital branding expert. We discuss his improv skills, which are still active every day in his current work. In addition, we examine LinkedIn as a platform that has evolved from a job seeker site and career development, to business development. Notably, there is a LinkedIn function for the goals you have in career and business. With the evolution of LinkedIn, we have seen video become a prominent source of content. JD shares with us what you need to keep in mind when creating a video and well as how this could put your brand on the line if not done properly.
This is an insightful conversation for anyone looking to expand their LinkedIn profile or exploring video as a means of delivering their content.
Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:
- Thought leaders can use LinkedIn as a flexible platform that can change and grow with them.
- Delivering your thought leadership by video requires a certain level of authenticity and production value.
- Improvisation isn’t just a skill for the stage, thought leaders can develop it to have better conversations.
Are you using LinkedIn for thought leadership? Do you need help converting your conversation there to more business wins? Contact Thought Leadership Leverage and we can assist you!
Transcript
Peter Winick Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is JD Gershbein. He is the founder and CEO of Outlook Communications. As I was looking through his rather long bio, which I’m choosing to not read at length today because it’s fairly extensive. But I’ll give you some of the highlights. So he’s going to be a Ted Speaker, he’s got his own podcast, He’s got his own communications company. He’s a LinkedIn expert. And one of the things I found most exciting or most interesting is he is an improv guru. So he was at Second City in Chicago, not only as a student but as an as they call him performers, but as part of the group years 30 years ago, and then came back a couple of years ago now to continue to refine his improv skills. So we’ll probably use some of them today. So welcome aboard.
JD Gershbein JD Hey, is this where I say, Thanks for having me?
Peter Winick No. Okay.
JD Gershbein We think.
Peter Winick It’s scripted. Scripted? Said the improv. Right? You can say wherever you like it would be, it would be improv.
JD Gershbein So I’m delighted to be here. Thanks.
Peter Winick Thanks. So you’ve got a lot of the boxes checked, right? So, Ted, speaker, consultant, LinkedIn expert, personal branding guy, how? And there’s a law degree in there, Of course. And some other stuff, right? Law degree.
JD Gershbein No, you must be. You must have me confused with a lawyer.
Peter Winick You know what? I. I read JD. I’m sorry. A B.A. That would make more sense.
JD Gershbein There you go. There any?
Peter Winick Yeah, in marketing. So I’ll ask you one of my favorite questions, which is sort of how the heck did you get here in this in this sort of non-linear, crazy thought leadership world?
JD Gershbein Absolutely. My thought leadership journey, as it were. And yes, you know, nothing has been really regimented or planned. Peter, I’m, I’m off script and I’ve, I basically tell people these days I’ve improvised my whole career, perhaps my whole life and continue to improvise. So, you know, I’ve been on a on a path that that started innocently enough. I grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, very into school, very into extracurricular activities, very well-rounded, had a lot of creative outlets and then got the college degree, wasn’t sure where to go from there. I was I grew up in a medical household, so my father was a very dedicated man and highly respected man of medicine. So the path took me through graduate school. I got a couple of degrees and then and then what? Had a career in sales and marketing. And then things changed for me when I sent my first email. And I’ve been in the digital world ever since. And when social media came on the scene and for me in 2000, five ish, a year later, I saw LinkedIn and I was never the same. So I’ve really kind of carved this digital career out of thin air.
Peter Winick Interesting. So one of the things I’ve seen a lot of actually over the years is if you were to survey and this is I don’t have data on this, but my intuition is typically fairly accurate. If you were to interview 100 dentists and say, how many of you have studied improv, I would argue maybe the handful would raise their hand. In this world of content about leadership and authorship and speakers and all that. There are far more folks that have studied improv, folks that have had some sort of theatrical training as well. It might be musical. There’s something about that. The skill set, the courage, the things that it take to package something and get on a stage and have the guts to do it that do parlay well into this field. We do. How would you respond to that?
JD Gershbein I would agree. And I think there’s a very fine line between performance art and leadership in business. Yeah. Yeah. These days we’re encouraged to be on and you have to be on at all times to engage with people in the right way, to engage with a high variety of people in the right way. And I literally moved from situation to situation. I don’t know what’s on the other end. I hope that my conversation partner finds me, finds that common ground with me, and we’re able to communicate effectively. But there are some that don’t. And we need a lot of people during the course of our business lives in our lives in general, and you just have to kind of have that feeling out, period. Who is this person? What are their core values? How am I going to be conversational, be relevant and.
Peter Winick Well in conversations by definition or improv? I mean, there’s nothing worse. I’m a bit more like you in that way, where I like to just see where it goes. Like, you know, whether I’m in a meeting and I have my own agenda of I’ve got to hit these three notes. I don’t have to do it in such a structured way that it, you know, the three minutes 30 I hit bullet point number seven. To me, there’s nothing that drives me crazier than either being in a conversation or meeting or some sort of communication with someone else. And they’re so stuck to their script that, you know, like, you know, a washing machine fell from the ceiling and they don’t even begin technology like some they have to only go in that way. And I think, quite frankly, it’s lazy that that’s the only way they know how to do things.
JD Gershbein To your point, you cannot sound too well rehearsed, otherwise you look mechanized. And nobody wants to have conversations with robots because there’s a finite amount of responses that a robot can deliver unless of course, they’re programed to be improvisational. So, so for me.
Peter Winick It’s like we can go, go, go to a chat bot now and actually you do that.
JD Gershbein You can spit out random words. And I think that to hold conversations today, to open them, to navigate them, to finesse them, and to use the parlance of our times to convert them into business wins, we have to be poised and polished. We can’t be contrived. We really have to be in the moment with whom we’re speaking.
Peter Winick Which requires listening and which requires processing. And it’s a higher level and it demands more from both parties to be able to do, but it’s actually a much better experience. So I want to I want to pivot now because I would be remiss if I didn’t. You are a LinkedIn expert, right? So it’s personal branding. But I would say, you know, if someone said to me, you know, really, really describe JD, I would say he’s the LinkedIn guy for personal branding.
JD Gershbein Right? Well, I never self-declare as an expert for the record. I never call myself an expert out of first person. It’s I like to hear you use that term. But for me, just like thought leader I don’t self-declare. Let’s just say I’ve spent about 50 to 60,000 hours on LinkedIn.
Peter Winick Right? So, so the point you made is a great point because anybody that tells me how brilliant they are at something is you’ve just decreased the trust level. But what I’m saying is if someone else said to me, describe JD, I would describe you as an expert or thought leadership, thought leader in with a heavy dose of LinkedIn got your own brand. So I happen to like LinkedIn, which, you know, I spend a ton of time, but a fair amount of investments are made there. You and I met there. I’ve met some amazing people there. I’ve had met new client relationships. There are all sorts of relationships there. And I think, you know, five, six, seven years ago, there was probably this thing where if you’re of a certain level at a company SVP, you know, whatever that was, you don’t play them. LinkedIn is for the junior level folks looking for a job. But I don’t agree with that. I mean, there are sea level folks. There’s people from every walk of life there. Did give me your. Sort of justified for me, if you will, as if you’re talking to maybe a CEO or business leader, why they should have a presence there.
JD Gershbein Interesting, you should say, how the site has evolved. I have been around the social science on all of this and studied the behaviors, the actions, the correspondence patterns, everything regarding LinkedIn. And yeah, I mean, a certain contingent of people feel this is a job seeker site and will always be. And hey, unless I’m looking actively looking for a new gig, I’m not going to be on LinkedIn. But what we’ve seen through the years as part of the LinkedIn chronology, it has moved from career development through business development back to career development. We are using it to supplement our own professional timelines in whatever way is relevant to us if we’re selling products and services. If you’re a speaker looking for a stage, if you’re an owner looking to sell books, or if you’re a company looking to become industry experts, there is a LinkedIn function related to the goal. So my practice has been obviously discerning what that goal is and then sitting with the people internally to really map that out and use LinkedIn and the highest intellectual and emotional way to get them to that that promise land.
Peter Winick And what I would add to that is from a thought leadership perspective, you have to have a presence, in my opinion. You have to have a presence on LinkedIn, right? If you’re if you’re writing books, if you’re out there speaking, if you’re a domain expert in subject X, one of the cool things about LinkedIn is whether you’re a corporate person, right? That might move jobs every three years, five years, whatever. Your LinkedIn world is transportable, right? So your thought leader, if you’re content, anything that you do will go when you work for ABC Corp versus X, Y, Z Corp, it gives someone a better three dimensional perspective of who you are than sort of the resume, you know, from 19 whatever to 20, whatever I did, X, Y, and Z. It’s much more robust. If I can see your videos, if I can see what you’re writing about it, I can see the evolution of your thinking and that you actually have a presence there. I would also argue, all things considered, it’s a huge tiebreaker in a business development standpoint. If you’re looking at a consultant like you versus someone else and someone else doesn’t have the gravitas that you do on the richness.
JD Gershbein Well, I said this in 2006 when I hung out my shingle as a LinkedIn specialist, and I’ve been saying it now where we’re at right now, almost 15 years later, at the time of our taping, the LinkedIn profile is flexible, it is elastic and it is your most important document in all of business. It is a digital asset, an asset to anybody that’s interested in truly building a personal brand and standing out in the marketplace. And it’s portable. As you say, it’s easily shippable. You can add and delete content as you see fit. You can represent yourself on a daily basis like I do. I’ve gone through several incarnations of my own LinkedIn profile and I’m working with people today who are not only pivoting, but going through a classic reinvention or rebrand or recalibration. And that’s the beauty of LinkedIn, is it gives you this this nucleus, this central structure of a profile, and you can amend it constantly.
Peter Winick And I would add, yeah, I would add to that as an author or as a speaker, as a thought leader. Here’s where it gets sort of interesting from a business perspective, right? So Person X is pitching to a traditional publishing house and they’ve got great credentials, a great story to tell, etc., etc.. But you know, 17 followers up on LinkedIn and you can tell that it’s their admin that manages it for them and there’s not much effort going into there. And then you’ve got at that the competition, if you will, that has been writing about the hypotheses that are in the book for five years. And you can see where the idea of the book morphed and then, you know, wow, it’s getting engaged. Look at this one. Holy cow. It’s not so much a numbers game, but look at the level of engagement that this thought leader has with an audience and how we know what this book is going to do. It’s going to give them what they want because we can sort of go back historically and see that level of interaction. And that’s the difference between getting a good book deal or not, I think that sort of thing all the time. Again, being a speaker of all those things, it’s you know, when you say and I like how you said it earlier, stuff for you to call yourself an expert, but when you’re selling your services, you are calling yourself an expert. Right? And what are what are others going to do? Check you out, you know.
JD Gershbein Well, you have to let them make up their own minds about you. Yes. You have to comport yourself as any leader would comport himself or herself. You have to you have to deliver the goods on a daily basis. And if you are commanding a huge following, you are now responsible and accountable to that following for providing great content that is going to be consistent, sustainable and obviously recommendable. So thought leadership today, I think the lines have blurred a little bit on who’s a leader, who’s an industry expert and authority figure, deep domain expert, call it what you will. You have to comport yourself. You have to. Visualize yourself in that role and let people make up their own minds about you. And that’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve put myself out there. This is my way of doing it. You’re experiencing my DNA the way that I’m hardwired around a certain topic. And I’m prepared to speak on a number of different terms. Sure.
Peter Winick Sure.
JD Gershbein But I happen to be very competitive when it comes to how we assemble ourselves online, how we build communities, how we maneuver through them, and how we gain a competitive advantage in the digital age.
Peter Winick Yup. Well, I like what you said. It’s a place to show who you are and what you’re about, and it’s not. That doesn’t mean you’re objective with your content or your thought. Leadership is to win everybody over because the fact that you’re your take on X, Y, z is different than mine. That’s a good thing, right? So, hey, if I am aligned with your thinking or at least intrigued by it, it might be a little bit different. You’re not just saying the same old, same old. That’s actually a good thing. I think sometimes people are afraid. You don’t want to be offensive per se, but there’s nothing wrong with having a perspective or point of view that you can back up. It’s maybe a little bit different than.
JD Gershbein Hey man, as I’ve always said, nobody is everybody’s cup of tea and I strive to be an acquired taste.
Peter Winick Exactly like brussel sprouts or kale.
JD Gershbein There you go.
Peter Winick There you go. If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.
Peter Winick So what other than LinkedIn? Right. Because I think that one of the things people struggle with is, okay, where do I put the energy? Because every social platform. So number one, your social strategy has to be a subset of your marketing strategy, which has to be directed by who you’re trying to serve. Right. Because people think like, what’s my TikTok strategy? And I’m like, I don’t know that you have a haircut strategy. What is your you know what I mean? You have to sort of why would you look at that in isolation of everything else that you’re doing? So then people get a little overwhelmed with, so what do I do on YouTube? What do I do on TikTok and what do I do there and what do I do there? And how do you help people sort of untangle that? And I said, well.
JD Gershbein I explain to them the tenets of the attention economy and we hear the phrase break through the clutter an awful lot. And to a certain point, we are breaking through the clutter. Now you have to really break through the intellectual and emotional layers of the brain and really target the amygdala of people, because there are so many people out there as we tape producing video and it’s poorly conceived, it’s old fashioned. It’s just not. It’s striking a chord with people. It’s if you’re going to do it, go big or go home. Media production is where we are going to differentiate ourselves because now people can see the real unique machine that we are how we operate in front of a camera. Are we breaking our gaze? Are we stumbling over our words? Are we using too many filler words? Are we indicating? Are we articulating? Are we orating well? And I think that becomes a real piece of the thought leadership equation is how we are perceived by others in a in media that have become now very vibrant and very visual. It’s No.
Peter Winick One and it’s not all media for everybody. Right. So I just want to I want to I want to go back there for a minute because I’ve seen some folks that are brilliant writers whose books that, you know, and they’re just they’re not they’re not comfortable on video. They’re flat. They’re very flat. It’s awkward, it’s academic, it’s whatever. And if they’re not willing to develop those skills, I would argue then they should don’t put out a mediocre representation of your thinking when you’re capable of excellence in different media. Right. Don’t be afraid to try. But if the reality is like, Yeah, you kind of kind of suck on video, I’d rather read an article that you wrote and stay in that mode. Would you agree?
JD Gershbein I agree. And it took a while to get there, Peter, because the video marketing, especially video storytelling, as we call it now, is was really not a mainstream practice. When I first started, I was one of the first people to upload video to my LinkedIn profile and where 99 of 100 people didn’t know how it was done. LinkedIn has made it available to everyone they made. They’ve made their publishing platform available to everyone. So now we have these modes of outreach and expression and still there are so many people without it. And you can’t just turn the iPhone on yourself and put up 30s or 45 seconds or five minutes of dreck. You really have to think it through because this is your brand on the line and the stakes are going up. And if people are willing to spend 30s 60s 90s with you on a video, they may be willing to buy the book and they’ll be willing to talk to their internal people and bring you on a virtual presentation or a or. At a conference. You really have to play that in with that first original expression.
Peter Winick So I want to unpack a point that you made there. So one point was you can’t just turn on the iPhone. But I think the real point was the thoughtfulness of the content. Because I would argue there’s a format and a time and place for highly produced. So we do a lot of stuff that’s expensive in studio. It’s on the money. The lighting’s perfect. Someone actually touches my what’s left of my like it’s like, wow. Right. And then there’s other things that we do because of speed, because of time, whatever. That are a little more casual. And the fact we’re never doing anything like back of an Uber Gary V running like whatever. But things that are less professionally produced. But the belief is there’s a message here and you’ll forgive me the casualness of the production due to time or whatever, because there’s something to say. So how would you sort of thread that needle?
JD Gershbein Well, I believe that we should be authentic and fearlessly authentic. And my authenticity is I’m a go big or go home kind of guy. I’m totally fine with myself. If I were to go out there with an unkempt look, but maybe not in front of my constituents or maybe not in front of the LinkedIn community. Sure. Okay. I believe that if you’re going to deliver a message and if you’re looking to convert this message into sales moments and eventually into business wins, that people have a certain level of expectation on it. There’s yes, there are people who are checking in every day with their quote unquote, LinkedIn family. They want them to be seen in a more casual look, maybe the hoodie, the flannel jammies. Yeah, maybe. But at the same time, I’m a I have a media background and I’m extensively media trained. And I want that training to be a part of my brand. And it shows I don’t go out there and produce haphazard videos. And when it gets to merging Improvisational skills in front of the camera, you’ve got to have a certain authentic quality to what you’re doing.
Peter Winick So I think your answer is really the authenticity, because part of what you’re selling is the finesse and that, you know, that level of of domain expertise in media where others might be forgiven a little bit because it’s really about the content. It’s about what does that person have to say if they’re a financial expert in the markets are tanking. I need to hear what they say and I’ll forgive you that it’s obviously in your basement.
JD Gershbein Well, exactly. I think there’s a certain gravitas to video production at this point. And plenty of people out there humanizing the LinkedIn platform and doing these stripped down, unplugged videos of themselves in casual situations. And that’s fine. There’s no problem with it. But I think for me, I’ve always I guess it’s my it’s my demographic, Peter. I’m a boomer. I’m a little old school when it comes to. Yes, I’m a shirt and tie, buttoned up guy. But I also know when to peel back and, and let people kind of see a larger window into my world.
Peter Winick So am I supposed to say, okay, Boomer, now am I supposed to.
JD Gershbein Say you can if you like. I’m fine. I think it’s a.
Peter Winick It’s a horrible statement.
JD Gershbein I can I say I connect with every cohort I love with the millennials are doing. I think they’re the ones who are going to make this their own within the next.
Peter Winick Yeah, absolutely.
JD Gershbein So I think that we can all learn from everybody at this stage. I, I embrace the role of leader by example. So if I’m going to go out there and do it, I have to do it. What’s comfortable for me, comfortable for me is investing in quality, lighting, good object, good. I know. And just being rehearsed, polished, but yet still improvisational.
Peter Winick Which is the key. Yeah. So this has been phenomenal. Any final thoughts? Words of wisdom, pearls of knowledge. No pressure. Like, we’re all improvising.
JD Gershbein We really are. Are we? I mean, we improvise day to day. I’m one of those folks that I wake up in the morning and sometimes the first email I look at will dictate my entire day and I think I’ll.
Peter Winick Be good or bad.
JD Gershbein I mean, I’m on record as saying that sometimes the best plan is no plan at all. And when you’re trying to make things happen in the digital world, you’re trying to advance a platform of thought leadership and build a strong, recognizable personal brand. There’s only so much you can do. A lot of that lies outside your control. Someone like yourself, who is a scholar and very acutely aware community builder, understands this, that we all have different personalities, we all have different learning styles, different leadership styles, and we all have assets that we bring to the table. We all want to make people better, whether it’s through our content, through our environment, give through working with their teams, through our video content. We all want to make people better, give them cause and pause to think and just learn. Keep becoming self aware.
Peter Winick Great. Well, this has been phenomenal. I appreciate your time and I appreciate all you’ve shared with us today. Thank you so much.
JD Gershbein JT Likewise. Thanks for having me on. My pleasure.
Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit. Our Web site at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com to reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.
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