E74 - How to Build a Powerful Personal Brand on LinkedIn Using AI | Mandy McEwen

So when it comes to personal branding, it's the opposite of what I teach in outbound. You never want to use the word I. You know, like when I'm cold emailing, I'm not going to be like, you know, I think that you should do this, Carlos, and I came across your profile and I can help you do XYZ. Welcome to the 1% Edge podcast, where we dive into the journeys of extraordinary guests committed to getting 1% better. Today's topic, AI-powered personal branding. You know, we all ask ourselves, hey, is my LinkedIn profile or content really attracting the right audience? Does it represent my own personality? How do I navigate this LinkedIn algorithm to get the most out of my content or make sure it's reaching the right audience? All those questions I have no answers to. So thank God that Mandy McKeown is joining us today. She is the founder of Luminetics and Mod Girl Marketing. Welcome, Mandy. Thanks for having me, Carlos. Well, I'm happy to get you. I know we went back and forth. You're busy. You're traveling the world. So I'm happy that I could get you in time. Yes. Likewise. I'm finally here. I made it. I made it. Now, this will come out later in 2026, but by then you probably hit another five countries. I've slowed down a little bit in the past 12 months, but still a lot. You might be maturing. Who knows? I might be. So, uh, all right, for our audience, why don't we start out with kind of like setting the stage, you know, like, what do you mean by personal branding or, you know, because maybe it means a lot of things are different people. And then we can dive into how do we make it better, especially as we look at LinkedIn or other tools like that out there. Absolutely. So we are living in an age where personal branding is a non-negotiable, especially with AI. because now more than ever you have to stand out and you have to seem human now carlos like uh you and i back in the day before ai or even social media was a thing we were doing old school relationship building and business like you know people did before all these cool tech things even existed right so we have to actually go back to that the fundamentals of what makes people like know and trust other business professionals. And that is why personal branding is so crucial. So it's really the intersection of your how, your why, and your what. So what are you doing exactly? How are you doing it in a way that makes you different to your unique target audience? And why are you doing this? Why they should listen to you. And if you have, for everyone listening to this, if you have a LinkedIn profile, you have a personal brand. period whether you want a personal brand or not if you have a linkedin profile then you have one of course if you never log in that's a different story but as a professional it doesn't matter what your job title is whether you're an entrepreneur a salesperson a marketer in hr whatever it is i can promise you if you build a personal brand it's going to help your career period because you are going to stand out and you are going to position yourself as someone who is different and someone who is worth whatever you are asking because as we another you know your network is your net worth which we've been saying for decades now now that's more important than ever and so that is why i'm so passionate about helping people establish a personal brand that is actually authentic and drives conversation and opportunities. All right. So maybe let me throw out some scenarios out there because I'm thinking about like some of my friends that might be listening to this and some of them might be older, like my age, and they think, oh, you know, I'm a senior executive. I work for a company. I mean, you know, what does it matter if I have a big personal brand on LinkedIn, right? You know, my identity in, I've already built a whole bunch of professional relationships. You know, let's take that scenario first and then we can, I got a couple others for you. Sure. So if you're going to retire soon. this isn't relevant to you right but even people that retire so we work with a like the majority of our we have a lot of you know 50 plus 60 plus even professionals that work with us for us to help them establish our personal brand because even as high performers they get bored and they they start their own businesses anyway like they never really retire right so it's like they've got unless they're you know balling out of control and don't want to do anything that's a different story but a lot of people that even retire with their job they're doing something else too they're starting something they have a partner they started a company maybe they're just consulting on the side for fun even if they don't need the money they're just doing it so regardless unless you're planning to fully retire and do absolutely nothing then you need a personal brand and the reason is because most people who were talking about those professionals that have you know been experienced and been building relationships for 20 30 plus years they're not maximizing those relationships though so to answer your question your friends are going to be like oh i already have all these connections but what are you doing with them nothing you're not doing anything right so maximize those and the way you do that is by building your personal brand posting content keeping in touch with those people re-engaging with them this isn't just a what people see on the front end so when i'm talking about and this is a misconception people have too the personal branding is all about social media and posting content and looking cool it's not there's so much that goes on on the back end i would not have the personal brand i have now with hundreds and thousands of followers across every social media platform if it wasn't for my relationship building skills not to mention revenue i wouldn't be sitting here as a 15-year entrepreneur when most entrepreneurs you know this probably better than me probably what is it like less than two years startups fail what is that yeah i mean something like that even two years seems like a long run for someone that's exactly exactly right so i wouldn't be here now after all of these years if it wasn't for my relationship building skills and that's what people don't see it's the stuff that goes on behind the scenes it's you keeping in touch with people you nurturing those relationships you have those connections that you've built because you never know what opportunities could happen when you're doing that so it's not just i'm posting great content i'm providing value i'm helping people for free and not asking anything in return it's i'm keeping relationships going i'm randomly reaching out to people i'm checking in i'm following up right i'm keeping those relationships going and so that is my answer to your question is all of these things matter and it doesn't matter what your age is or where you're at in your career unless like i mentioned you're literally about to retire and do nothing I like the balling piece as well. All right. So let me give you the other end of the spectrum. Hey, I'm in my early 20s. I'm in my mid 20s or late 20s. And, you know, I got an SDR, BDR job and I'm working for, you know, a company. I don't have any content to post. Would you advise people like that? So easy. Your company has endless content for you. You have a marketing team. Your marketing team has lots of content. They have blogs. They have stuff. You probably don't like the content to post on your LinkedIn, but that's what AI is for. You can train AI to help you reposition that content, repurpose that content in a way that sounds like you. So that's why we built our NextWave membership, our Lumi post writer. We have a whole AI system for exactly what I just said. And we do this. We help sales teams do exactly what I just said. This happens a ton. I hear that all the time. I don't know what to post. You know, I don't have time. But your marketing team has endless content for you. And all you have to do is know how to use that to then post your own thought leadership content. Because you can't just take what marketing has. Most marketers, I'm a marketer, mind you. I actually love marketing more than I do sales, but I have to do both, obviously. And so as a marketer, I can tell you that most marketers don't know how to drive engagement and results on LinkedIn specifically. They just don't. Unless they were trained on that. they've got too much going on they're doing a million different things they're doing blogs they're doing press releases they're doing every social media channel they don't have the time to be an expert in linkedin so you can't expect to take marketing's content and have it perform really well on your linkedin because it's not it's totally different when you're doing stuff on your personal linkedin versus the company linkedin because you have to seem like you're the credible expert and you're sharing your unique point of view and your story So when it comes to personal branding, it's the opposite of what I teach in outbound. You never want to use the word I. You know, like when I'm cold emailing, I'm not gonna be like, you know, I think that you should do this, Carlos. And I came across your profile and I can help you do X, Y, Z. You don't, you want to actually remove all I's if you can. And personal branding and content, it's the opposite. You want to tell your unique story. When I was, you know, last week when I was talking to my client, this happened or you know when i was 23 in my first sdr role i thought that xyz you know tell your story tell your unique point of view that's what gets people to trust you follow you and want to actually respond to your outreach it's not copying and pasting or just clicking the repost button on your company content that's a bare minimum of what you should do it's better than doing nothing but that's not what i'm considering a personal brand all right So let's talk platform and tools. And this is going to, you know, break this up pieces. So when I think about platforms, I mean, we already mentioned it. It seems like LinkedIn, it's the Facebook of business in a way. And is that the main tool to use or are there others as well that, you know, because like, for example, I had someone say, Carlos, you know, you should post some of your stuff on Instagram. And I go, well, that's not where my target buyer really is. And they said, yeah, maybe not. But. There's a part of the population that will start there versus LinkedIn. And if you ever want to reach them, you got to be where they're at. So any advice on what should be your primary platform and what might be some secondary ones for us to post on? Yeah, really good question. Everything is changing so fast, Carlos. So my answer is it when you like if you would have asked me this two years ago, I would have given you a different answer than I'm about to give you because of AI. and how search engines are working and how literally the entire digital landscape is changing because of ai so if you're just starting out and you don't have the resources common sense just go where your people go so for you carlos if you're if your target audience is mostly spending time on linkedin then start there you know you don't you're gonna burn yourself out um and your money and your sanity if you try to go everywhere okay so focus first on where your people spend the most time With that said, because of how AI is working, the more platforms you're on, the more you're going to show up in these LLMs. So ChagiBT, Claude, Gemini, all of them, they are looking at every social media platform out there. They are ranking. Instagram posts, Google, you know, is ranking Instagram posts, LinkedIn posts, YouTube is massive. Like for me, YouTube and LinkedIn, I just started getting serious on LinkedIn or on YouTube this year. And I'm out of YouTube videos now, right when it starts ramping up. I'm getting tons of requests from YouTube and my team's like, you're out of videos. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so much work. So it's a lot of work to be everywhere. I personally have people that I pay to help me with these things. I have endless content because I've been doing this forever, but you will find me on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube. You will find me everywhere. And I'm posting multiple times a week, my team is, as me, because I want to have that omnipresence approach. Now, I've been doing this, what I just said, for a very long time, right? But I'm getting more serious about it. Blogs, SEO-friendly blogs, so you can show up more in searches. everything how people are using the internet is also changing less people are going to google they're going more to chat gpt so you have to also consider like what are your goals and priorities and start small and then gradually work your way up you you can't just go all in if you're just starting out right now if you have the resource to do that amazing hire people to do that for you so i would say you're right carlos with starting with linkedin and it's always a test like if you're like i don't know if my people are on instagram test it out give it two months, be consistent and see what happens. You know, you might be shocked though. I actually got a, right when I launched our next wave membership to the public, we've had it for a year. It's our AI forward go-to-market membership for founders and sellers. I had no idea that people were looking at my stuff on Instagram and I sold like that $1,000 package. from a dm on instagram and i just happened to log in i don't even log in hardly doing instagram at all and i just happened to log in that day and see her message and i was like and she's like i want to get in you just closed the doors like will you let me in and i'm like what i just got a customer from instagram this is amazing i don't even hardly my team is doing stuff i never even pay attention to it so you might think carlos that you don't have people on instagram you probably do you probably do well it's uh it's funny so when i started the podcast at the beginning of this of you know 2025 i uh i'm just gonna put a post on instagram i'm gonna dust that thing off and i just did like a post and then you know i don't know a month later uh i'm at our local brewery and the owner of the brewery which i know you know pops his head up and goes hey carl's great podcast you know pa how did you find out alan how'd you find our podcast because you posted it on instagram i saw it exactly So like, you know, you said you never know where people are listening. All right. Yeah. So let's say that LinkedIn is our primary place to do it. And then, you know, as you can't have a podcast, we're talking about AI. What I've seen is like when you look at the top AI platforms, you know, what comes up of places that they look for stuff, Reddit and Webipedia are in the top three across all the top players. I go, I have no presence on either one of those. You know, is that something that you need to go do or, Hey, it just depends on what you're trying to do. No, you don't, you don't need those. Um, now if you have the resources, I've been learning some crazy stuff about Reddit lately. It's wild, man. This whole world is crazy. There's like companies that have hundreds and thousands of bots that are training that look like real people that are using Reddit to manipulate things and show up in AI. It's, it's a. Wild time. What a time to be alive is what I say. But no, you don't need to do that. I've got one of my biggest clients this year, a global media company, and they found me in chat GPT by asking something very specific. And I don't even have a blog. I didn't. I do now on the Luminetics website. Now I've been blogging for Mod Girl Marketing, modgirlmarketing.com, my umbrella company, if you will, literally since 2010. Endless blogs there. really high rankings in google shows up in chadgbt the llms etc the luminetics website it's newer i started that brand in 2021 we had no blog and yet because of my social media presence and the fact that i've just been posting online for 15 years and i the the chadgbt gods are associating mandy mckeown with luminetics when they typed in modern global LinkedIn training company for sales teams. So very specific, modern, global, all those things. It took them together and bam, I showed up. And she was like, you were like one of five people and you were by far the best choice. And so we hired you. I was like, that's amazing. Thanks, ChadGPT. And I hadn't even, the SEO was not great. I'm an SEO nerd too. That's how I started way back in the day. And I was like, I didn't even try. And it still showed up. And of course, we're not doing Reddit. When we're talking about founders, solopreneurs, small business owners, they're not going to have the time and resources to do all these things. So the easiest thing is to just start posting content on social media and be consistent. Okay. All right. So a lot of folks, in fact, I just saw the LinkedIn survey. Someone asked like, you know, how often do you use AI? And it was like 70 some odd percent all said every day. Yeah. And a lot of folks, when you think, okay, I got to write something now for a post. A lot of people run it through AI. And, you know, it'll show up those funny little emojis. It does those long, what do you call those? Long tabs, long dashes? Em dashes. Em dashes. You know, and when you look at it, you go, yep, they definitely use ChatCBT to write this. So what are your thoughts on that whole, how do you best leverage AI but still sound like a human being? Yes. So you just teed me up for a shameless little self-promo, but it's going to be helpful as well. That is why you build custom GPTs if you can. So we built our Lumi, or you can just work with us and get our membership. So our Lumi post writer is a custom GPT that we trained on hundreds of high-performing posts. We trained it. It doesn't sound like AI. It doesn't put em dashes. It doesn't put hashtags and weird emojis or use words like revolutionary and synergy and all of those cheesy words that AI uses, right? So if you want a massive shortcut and we have a whole system that clones you, it sounds just like you, whatever, hit me up. Now, if you don't and you want to DIY this, you have to know how to train AI, period. Even if you're just doing prompts, you have to train it. You have to upload your own writing samples. You have to tell it not to use or... By the way, pro tip, you can't just say don't use em dashes. You have to tell it what to replace it with. So if you don't want an LLM, it doesn't matter if you use Claude. By the way, I like ChadGPT only because I built a whole suite of 10 plus custom GPTs for our members in it. However, Claude is better, in my opinion, at writing just without any training. I prefer Claude. I pay for both Claude and ChadGPT, by the way. My entire membership is ChadGPT. because of custom GPTs, but I prefer Claude. So for those of you listening, try both. Tell it though, instead of using em dashes, please replace it with a comma or start a new sentence. You can't just say don't use em dashes. So whenever you guys are working with LLMs and you're prompting it, you have to give it an alternative. So you have to learn the art of prompting a little bit. That's why like with our membership, it's... I say it's promptless because we already trained it on everything. Like these custom GPTs, you literally just get it. You don't have to prompt them. It's already highly trained. With everything else, you got to know what you're doing. Otherwise, you're going to look like a fool. Like you said, you're going to look like, oh, that screams chat GPT. So upload your writing samples. Tell it what you want. Tell it what you don't want. And use the same thread. If you don't build custom GPTs, I don't care if you use perplexity, clod. gemini gemini is really good now too by the way um they've done a lot of really cool things it's pretty awesome as well just be smart about it and you have to know how to talk to it so that you don't look like a robot because the fastest way for you to lose credibility when it comes to building your personal brand is by having everyone think that you're just copying and pasting from ai that's gonna do more harm than good you're better off not posting anything than posting garbage from ai and people being like oh that carlos guy i don't know about him he's got some somebody out there just typing into chat tpt with stuff and they're just printing it out all right so on linkedin uh i i have spent this year trying to put more content out there i do these two carousels a week with tips on them uh i've been i post uh i was doing two podcasts a week now i'm only releasing one podcast a week and i always post on there hey check out my latest podcast here's what we talked about and um you know one challenge about like this linkedin algorithm yeah how do you maximize your content so it has the reach it's getting to the right audience and Whatever your answer is, Mandy, I am sure by the time this podcast comes out, the things change already as well. But I'd love to get your opinion. How do you maximize, how do you deal with that algorithm today to get the most out of it? Yeah, I will give you an answer that's going to help anyone listening forever. Even if the algorithm changes in a month from now, I'm going to give you two answers. What's working now and what will always work. So let's talk about what's working now and what's changed with the LinkedIn algorithm. We are now seeing our posts have more life. And by that, I mean, they are alive for weeks now. Have you noticed that, Carlos? You'll be on LinkedIn and you'll see someone's post from three weeks ago pop up. Have you noticed that? I just had one of mine from three weeks ago pop up, which usually doesn't happen. Exactly. In fact, I heard once you post, it stops promoting your old post. And it doesn't. It doesn't. So that's not true, especially now. So LinkedIn is trying to be more like the other platforms with their algorithm, which is a relevancy based algorithm, kind of like TikTok. So TikTok, you can go viral and get a million followers in a week, starting from zero, if you post the right content, because TikTok is showing people posts based on relevancy, based on what they're already looking at. Now, before this year, LinkedIn was doing mostly a network based algorithm, meaning people in your network and in their network. So if I comment on Carlos, you know, if I comment on one of your posts, my network's going to see maybe Miku and commented on this. And maybe that's, you know, if those people aren't in your network, that's pretty much the only way they're going to see it or one of the main ways. Now it's a relevant, it's more of a relevancy based platform. This was always kind of a thing, but they're putting more emphasis on this now. Meaning you can show up for complete strangers now more than ever based on the types of content that you're posting. And with that comes a longer shelf life so it used to be your post is like dead in 48 hours people aren't going to see it after that you know which was really annoying you put all this time into it and then your post is just like oh you know the first hour matters the most which the first hour is still really important by the way the more comments and engagement you get in the first hour is going to help show linkedin that this is worthwhile but even then i read an algorithm report yesterday from my friend, Richard Vanderbilt, who's an algorithm expert. And even then, sometimes they throttle it after 60 minutes, even now with the algorithm changes. So you don't know. You guys can't, we can't be chasing the algorithm. Sometimes we have no idea why they do these things. However, the cool thing now is the relevancy-based algorithm is going to allow you to show up for more strangers and for a longer period of time. So I am constantly seeing my friends' posts from five days ago, from two weeks ago. from three weeks ago i am getting comments and likes on stuff from randos from three weeks ago and i'm like how did that because that's just that's the way the algorithm is now so you don't have to post as much either carlos so you the because of this algorithm you can post less as long as it's quality content and you're still going to get the views and the visibility if it's good content so before it's like you know we need to be posting multiple times i never posted a lot like this but sometimes i would do two posts a day which is a lot to keep up with with comments and everything it's a lot of time but now with the way things are shifting sometimes i don't even post every day a lot of times i'm posting every day but sometimes i'll go a couple days without posting and it does not matter because the rest of my content is great so what will never change is having a great hook to capture people's attention right out of the gate so the hook is the very first sentence that people see that's never going to change so You need to have a strong hook that captures people's attention. So they click that read more button or see more button and they want to actually read it. That is always an algorithm factor and that's never going to go away. The second thing is really common sense. Just have great content that helps people, period. And then personal stuff. Share your personal stories, share what's going on in your life, however personal you want to get. You don't have to get crazy here and talk about what you eat for dinner or breakfast or talk about a dramatic relationship story or whatever. You don't have to do all of these things. But the algorithm also likes when you switch up your content and the type of content. So mix it with images, mix it with text only, mix it with videos, with carousels like you're doing, Carlos. All those different formats tells the algorithm. that you are posting a variety of content and they're going to show your content to more people. And the last thing I'll say here is commenting. That is bigger than anything. So if there's one tip that people are going to take away from this that I don't think is going to change anytime soon, LinkedIn is placing even more emphasis on commenting. And we have something called the engagement sandwich strategy, which means you comment before you post and you comment after you post. So spend at least five minutes commenting, five to 15 minutes commenting before you post. then post and then spend another five to 15 minutes commenting after you post. And I promise you there is an actual difference. We've tested this. LinkedIn absolutely rewards you and shows your posts to more people when you are active right before you actually post. Yeah. Someone told me post once a day, comment 10 times a day. If you can, yeah, that's the way to do it. And a lot of people in our Next Wave community, they're getting significantly more impressions on their comments than their own posts. Like we're talking like 50,000 impressions on a comment. Oh, all right. And you kind of answered this just to make sure. So because people are like, okay, you know, it's not just text. You got to use video. Nope, it's not video. It's carousels. Nope, it's pictures. You know, you got to be more authentic with just some real pictures. You said use all of them. Is there one that's better than another? You don't have to use all of them. Pick your favorites. That's easiest. Also, like, I don't want people to think that this is going to be a full-time job for them to start posting on LinkedIn and build a personal brand there. My goal is to make it easier for everyone. And that's why I created my next wave membership to help speed up this process and still being authentic with AI to speed it up. But if you are good on camera, absolutely. do video. If you're not yet comfortable, you don't have to do video. If carousels are a pain in your ass, which they are with AI, it's easier, but you know, Carlos, you, you make them, you post them. You got to get a rhythm down and know what you're doing, but maybe don't do those right away. You could just stick with images and text only. If you want polls, throw polls in the mix, post a poll once a month. So you don't have to do all of them. You need to figure out what works for you and what is best for you and then switch it up. So there's no like right answer. Now, Video drives the most credibility and revenue, not the most impressions, unless you're one of those trending, you know, on mobile, Carlos, when you log in and it shows you like the feed that you can scroll through the vertical videos. And it's like stupid topics like what I do before my nine to five or, you know, workplace, you know, tips or whatever it is. Those are the ones that go viral because it's like LinkedIn is telling you like, this is what we want you to post about. So those videos get a lot of impressions. You can click on it and it will have a button that you can click and it'll like make your own. So it's like a day in the life, you know, and it's showing you those. It's like a category on LinkedIn mobile. And if you click this button, that's like make your own day in the life. They're going to show that to more people because you're doing what they want. I never actually, I've never done that. So spoiler alert, I've never done that once. I just post my own videos. Now, of course, if you have a funny video or something super cool. it might go viral but a lot of times it's not you're not going to be super happy with your impressions however because we're on camera it's going to drive more conversations and more revenue because people feel like they know you more right so you also can't look at vanity metrics um my stupid post about nothing go viral like i just posted about me in a cyber truck i drove my friend's cyber truck all last week in the bay area i'm in order right now you saw it 40 000 impressions wow ridiculous. And it was like four sentences. Do you like my ride this week? It drives me more than I drive it. Guess who I'm picking up? You know, guess who I'm driving around? And it was my, you know, fractional CRO, Lindsay Rios. And so people were commenting like, you know, and I like blurt out her in the comments. So I'm doing things also to like get engagement. Also like, guess who I'm driving around? It's a picture of me and Lindsay with an emoji over her head, you know? So, and people knew because her hair color. So anyway, it's little stuff like that. That's like, And I got like 400 profile viewers and like 20 new followers from stupid. And then people like arguing about how terrible the cyber trick is. I'm like, man, people have really strong feelings about cyber trucks. So it was wild. And like all of my travel posts, those always do really, really well. You know, whenever I'm talking and I post about my life in Hawaii, when I live there part time, when I'm traveling all over in these different countries, all of those do really well. And they have nothing to do with business. because it's me as a human and I'm showing my personal side. So when I'm talking about switching up the formats, I'm not just talking about text versus carousel versus images. I'm also talking about what are you posting and switching that up because no one wants to follow someone who's just posting about their business 24 seven. That is boring, but don't overdo it either. You know, this isn't, this isn't Facebook, but. You need to have an element of Facebook on your LinkedIn profile if you're going to actually build loyal followers that trust you. I've landed clients literally from my nomad post because we started conversations about travel. And that wouldn't have happened if I wouldn't have been doing that. And on my profile, I'm like, ask me what country I'm going to next. In my headline, I even put like island nomad because I love islands. There's little things I do that make me stand out and people remember me because of that. And that is a big tip for everyone listening. Don't just... Talk about business 24-7. Find what makes you different in general as a human, whatever that is, and put it in your profile. Talk about it. Share that side of you because you will be amazed at how many conversations will come from that. Love it. All right, Mandy. So obviously, like you said, you've been doing this for a while. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Oh, loaded question. Okay, so. When it comes to what I am working on most these days is our, I've already mentioned it multiple times, but we are so excited about our next wave membership. And that is our AI powered membership for founders and sellers. And there's nothing like this out there right now, which is why I'm so excited about it. So we have created a system to help you establish your unique point of view, optimize your LinkedIn profile, start posting amazing content in your own voice, a lot more than you're doing now. know how to message people and start conversations know what email copy what linkedin message copy is going to resonate with people know how to research your prospects all of this in record time with ai and we powered it with a community so a slack community a membership lindsay and i go live a couple times a month to help them out and we're super stoked about it because it's already getting amazing results for people within the first 30 days so people are saying things like wow, I haven't been this clear on my business in 10 years. I've been trying to come up with my messaging and in 15 minutes, I have done something that I haven't done in 10 years, you know? And it's funny because we're taking it back to the fundamentals too. And that's why we have something truly unique is because we're not just saying, here's a bunch of AI tools that we've trained. They're highly trained on 15 plus years of experience and knowing what works and driving, you know, lots of revenue for us and our clients over 15 years. it's not just that it's let's go back to what were we doing before ai you know what were we doing like i mentioned earlier going back to the fundamentals of coming up with this is why i'm passionate about what i'm doing i truly believe and have conviction that this is helping businesses or humans it is improving people's lives some way and believing that to your core and then coming up with a positioning and messaging that portrays that in the right way because that's kind of the hardest part for a lot of entrepreneurs is i know i'm good at what i do i believe in it i'm passionate about it but how do i translate that publicly for the world to know that you know in a way that resonates and that's why i'm so excited about what we're doing is because a lot of entrepreneurs they're all over the place they're gonna i can work with these people and these people and i can offer this service and this service and you're like what are you doing man everyone's confused like pick pick something and stick with it you know and position yourself around that then everything is more clear your messaging is more clear your posts are more clear etc etc so we're really going all in on that um in 2026 and coming up with new funnels i'll have a another free custom gpt i'm going to give people right now i have a free course and one in there now you guys want to grab it um and then you know i am traveling the globe while i do this as well so i'm excited about my upcoming brazil um carnival trip that's happening i know i'm super stoked for that So I've never been. So I'm trying to live my best life while doing some big things in my business. So that was a very short version of your question about me. All right. This is intended to be a short question. So what's that one thing you're working on these days to get 1% better? What's your 1% edge these days? Oh, man. And I'm trapping you into one, although I'm sure you got many. Okay. systems. So every day I am looking at what we're doing because we're trying to scale what we're having, right? So we have a scalable, I mean, I am not, I can't clone myself. I do actually have a clone of myself and Hey Jen. So I do technically have a clone, but she can't host live sessions for teams. So I train teams all the time. I train sales teams on LinkedIn, right? We've got that down. So Systems is how I'm getting 1% better every day. I'm looking at what we're doing with our Next Wave membership. How are we systematizing all of this and leveraging AI? So leveraging AI workflows and systems and doing that, looking at everything every single day. Even example, today and yesterday, I was looking at, okay, so when we launched again, we had a Black Friday offer for, we opened up the doors again to our Next Wave membership. It was closed. It's closed right now. And then I'm looking at WooCommerce. on WordPress set up with our active campaign and the revenue that's coming in per person. Some of it's messed up. Well, then I need reports every time we launch something. So I know, you know, this is the, how many people bought this, this individual bought these three things. This email had this many opens. These people came from this email, all of those things. I need systems for that with AI that can just do that for me. I don't want to manually be going in there and doing that. So that's literally what I'm working on right now. And this is. forever thing you know when as you know with businesses and new offers it's like you gotta it's always a process of what systems can i create to make our life easier and scalable so that is my one percent thing because that's i'm a creative i am this is not my strong suit like systems and processes i'm the type that's like let's just go build it let's do it you know and i'm a people person i'm not the type that's like that's why i need people around me that are more of that mindset of the operations and making things flow efficiently because i'm just like go go go and i'm like wait we we got to figure this out systematically so that's my answer that's one of the toughest things as an entrepreneur right you know uh if you're the creative you know how do i hand off the operational side and how can somebody do it and care as much as you do Well, that's the kicker, man, is the care as much as you do. And then not being a control freak like I am sometimes with my business. Because it's our babies. Like, no one's going to love it like we do. Period. Yeah. It's our family. So that's what really matters. Exactly. So you also have to have the right expectations of, like, no one's going to treat it like you do. So don't have unrealistic expectations, but try to find the right people who at least care. Yeah. I mean, in my businesses, like, I'll tell you the heart. One of my biggest mistakes is holding on to people. that don't fit the thing too long you know you give them all the chances in the world like it just doesn't it ain't working out and uh then you know i'm talking to one of my partners in one of my businesses i go i guess you know the people we want to be are the ones that hold on to somebody too long versus the ones that fired someone too quick well they say hire so fire fast so they do you know it's like you know it's it's a tough one and we gotta do a better job of we're getting better at it right like when we we find something's not working it's usually the first thing to say you know like for one of my businesses i've been doing it almost 13 years and i go you know we've never had someone that's turned it around like once we found a flaw where you don't fit in 13 years i've never seen one person go yep i got it i understand i'm gonna flip this around i'm gonna turn it around not once Well, now you know, Carlos, you've got to let him know. You've got one red flag and you're out. I don't want to be that person either. So we do give people chances. We're the land of endless chances. All right. Maybe it was great talking to you. If people want to get a hold of you, learn more about your business, hire you folks, what's the best way for them to reach out? Yeah, LinkedIn. I know it's a shocking answer, but hit me up on LinkedIn. Mention that you listen to this podcast with Carlos and I, and I'd be happy to help you out. And all my free goodies are on there as well. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Amanda. I really appreciate you being on the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Carlos. It's been fun. All right, everyone, that does it for this week's episode. If you found some value in it, please comment back and subscribe. I'm trying to catch up to Mandy somehow, some way. I greatly appreciate you all listening in. And until next time, I wish you nothing but the greatest success. Thanks again, Mandy. Thanks.

In this episode of the 1% Edge podcast, Carlos Nouche speaks with Mandy McEwen about the significance of personal branding in the age of AI, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn. They discuss how personal branding is essential for professionals at all stages of their careers, the importance of leveraging company content, and the evolving landscape of social media. Mandy shares insights on maximizing engagement through diverse content, understanding LinkedIn's algorithm, and utilizing AI for authentic content creation. The conversation also touches on the importance of building genuine connections and sharing personal stories to enhance one's brand.


Takeaways

Personal branding is essential in today's digital age.
Everyone with a LinkedIn profile has a personal brand.
Maximizing relationships is key to personal branding.
You can leverage your company's content for personal branding.
Choose platforms based on where your audience spends time.
LinkedIn's algorithm is now more relevancy-based.
Engagement through commenting is crucial for visibility.
Diverse content types enhance engagement on LinkedIn.
Authenticity in storytelling builds trust and connections.
Mandy's Next Wave membership helps entrepreneurs establish their brand.

Connect with Mandy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandymcewen/

- Carlos and the 1% Edge Team

Connect with Carlos Nouche on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cnouche/

Visit Carlos Nouche’s website here: https://carlosnouche.com/

Listen to The 1% Edge on these podcast platforms: 
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5DXOsN1j0AEjNPoJ68Fnq2
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-1-edge/id1814316904
Amazon Podcasts: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/19ea92c1-349b-493f-9646-30be896ab263/the-1-edge

#AI #artificialintelligence #businesstechnology #humanelement #adoption #futureofwork #productivity #BusinessLeadership #ExecutiveDevelopment #SalesStrategies #ProfessionalGrowth #ProductivityTips #CommunicationSkills #FutureOfWork #AIinBusiness #Resilience #ContinuousImprovement #Mentorship #LeadershipMindset #BlueRidgeBusiness #BusinessGrowth #WorkLifeBalance #CareerSuccess #TeamBuilding #StrategicPartnerships #SalesProspecting #LeadershipCommunication
The 1% Edge podcast delivers powerful insights for business owners, leaders, managers, and executives seeking to elevate their professional and personal lives. Hosted by Carlos Nouche, each episode features candid conversations with experts and entrepreneurs covering leadership, sales strategies, productivity, communication skills, AI adoption, resilience, and continuous growth. Tailored for the Blue Ridge, Georgia business community and beyond, the podcast equips listeners with actionable advice to overcome challenges, build strong teams, and drive lasting success in today’s fast-paced business environment. Tune in every week to gain the edge you need to lead with confidence and clarity.