August 29, 2025 • 45 mins
Data analytics might not sound like the recipe for viral content, unless you’re Bill Yost. A longtime Google and Netflix analytics pro turned chronic LinkedIn poster, Bill has built a following by mixing sharp industry insight with humor, relatability, and a little bit of chaos.
In this episode, we talk about finding your creative lane, the unexpected pros and cons of going viral, building a community that’s deeper than your follower count, and why your “niche” might not be as narrow as you think.
In this episode, we talk about finding your creative lane, the unexpected pros and cons of going viral, building a community that’s deeper than your follower count, and why your “niche” might not be as narrow as you think.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've all scrolled LinkedIn and thought, Wow, this is boring,
endless corporate jargon, self congratulatory posts, and content that feels
more like a press release than human conversation. Today, I'm
joined by Bill Yost, Netflix data analytics leader, chronic LinkedIn
poster and one of the ringleaders of weird LinkedIn. Bill
(00:20):
has built a loyal audience by breaking the platform's unspoken rules,
mixing humor with honesty, and proving that even the driest topics, yes,
data analytics, can go viral when you show up as yourself.
In this episode, we're talking about the upside and downside
of going viral, the curse of being interesting, how to
(00:42):
balance personality with professionalism, and why followers don't always equal community. Plus,
we get into his cookie business with his mom and
why it's the perfect extension of his personal brand. I'm
your host, Nicole Ramirez, and this is Talk Digital to Me,
where we uncover the latest in digital marketing, tech, AI innovation,
(01:04):
and the strategies for personal and professional growth. Let's dive in.
(01:34):
Today's guest is someone who proves that even the driest
topics like data analytics, can turn into Internet gold with
the right mix of humor and honesty. Bilio studied business
information Tech at Virginia Tech, started his career in consulting
and audit analytics, and then made his way to Google
in people analytics. He thought he'd retire there, but a
(01:56):
dream opportunity at Netflix changed that plan.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Colorado with his wife, daughter.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
And two dogs, Bill has become a self described chronic
LinkedIn poster. As I like to call him the shit
poster of LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
We're talking today about going viral, maybe, how you don't
actually want to, what it means to be interesting online,
and how to write funny content about the world's driest topics.
So thank you Bill for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Thank you so much for having me. Nikay, I really
appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So you've described your brain as breaking to the point
that you've started posting chronically on LinkedIn, and I feel
that what was going on for you when that started?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And what was that spark?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah? So I think important quick back context is I
was at Google for a very long time and in
that time I kind of made a brand for myself
as doing like goofy, creative off the wall stuff in
this like data analytics niche like that involves like making
parody songs about like some of the problems that data
analysts go through regularly and sending them around to just
get a kick out of it, or just funny memes
(03:03):
or stories or responses to group. I am because the
people analytics ecosystem at Google was like between one hundred
and one hundred and fifty people, So I had a
big audience to do this, right. Yeah, And as my
my tenure there was coming to an end, I realized
I had this giant creative energy that I no longer
had someplace to like put it, no outline for it,
no outlet. I mean, yeah, I'm going to go to
(03:23):
Netflix and I'm going to be goofy, right, But it
just like there's a ramp up period. And also it's
a much smaller team just inherently. I knew that going
into it, So I had a smaller audience.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You got it for weird slowly at a time.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
And oh my gosh, you're totally Although I will say,
with great credit to my manager, I don't know how
if I'll ever watch this or not, but he definitely
took it in stride. One of our very first team
meetings was like, I have a very specific way that
I like to build culture and I'd like to just
go for it. And I outlined it to him and
he was like, yeah, that sounds good. So my weird
turned on at Netflix quite early. I will say my
teammates can attest to that. But between those jobs, I'm
(03:58):
looking at LinkedIn and I've been on LinkedIn because I'm
all over ten years now, and I realized I had
never really gotten significant benefit from it. I had like
made some posts, I had interacted a little bit. Now
this is somewhat to my credit or detriment, however you
want to frame it. I was not always on LinkedIn
trying to actively engage and like make it the platform
I wanted it to be. But I started going on
(04:18):
there more often, and I'm seeing these posts from like
the people analytics influencer community, if you will, just like
the big names in this space, and I'm just kind
of bored by them, like they're not just really they're
not really entertaining me, they're not really informing me. And
I just started thinking, like what if I could do both.
Like I'm funny at work, I have this weird niche energy,
this is an audience, Like there's data analytics wanks out
(04:39):
there on LinkedIn? Sure, what if I just start doing weird,
funny posts. And this is around late February, and I
just started posting things to just see if I could
get some laughs from people. And I did. It started
to like people were giggling it stuff. It was a
pretty good good response. And then I started my Netflix
job and I realized that my CA leagues there had
(05:00):
a lot of the same kind of critiques of the
LinkedIn life. Basically like there's a lot of people doing
the work, but they're not all necessarily on LinkedIn making
posts talking about.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It all the time.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
In fact, I would say that, like the best data
analysts out there, I'm not the best data analyst. I
wish i was. It is probably like not posting on
LinkedIn ever, right, Like that's probably true in every single
field out Yeah. So basically, I'm like, this place is boring.
I want to try to make it better and kind
of like open up a spotlight to what I would
call the practitioners in this space, right, the people who
(05:32):
are looking at it and going, I'm not really getting
stuff that helps me in my day to day on
this platform. And if they can't get something useful, maybe
they could get a laugh, And that was kind of
my approach on the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I think LinkedIn is very much in need of some
humor on the platform. And you know, right when you
started coming up, it really coincided with this rise of
what everyone is calling weird LinkedIn and I love weird
LinkedIn And so you know when this all happened, what
do you think shifted the platform to be like this
and why do you think it resonated so widely with
people to lean into the weird?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
All right, first, nerd reference, are you a Spider Man
fan into the Spider Verse?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I like Marvel. I wouldn't say I'm like a total
nerd for it, but I do appreciate on market.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You know, I'll do the like the fifteen thousand foot
explanation the Spider Verse movies, there's this idea of a
cannon event that happens all across the Spider Man realities,
whether they each there's a Spider Man in each one, yes,
and it's you know, it's like it's like Uncle Ben dying.
Basically sorry spoiler alert if you didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Know, that's on you.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So that cannon event kind of permeates everyone's realities in
a way that's kind of like inexplicable. And I was
thinking about that in the context of weird LinkedIn, because
it seems like, around the same time my brain is
breaking and I'm starting to put all this weird shit
on there, my algorithm is now tilting towards a lot
of other people who are starting to put weird stuff
around at the same time. I mean, this for me
was really Nick shows up right. I'm in Hawaii in
(06:57):
late February, early March something like that, and Lena is
still asleep, and I'm just fooling around on a stupid
post on LinkedIn, like Game of Thrones mashed up with
analytics or something like that, and I see people start
posting about this Nick Power guy lowercase stuff, texting like
he or posting like he text his friends. And I'm like, huh,
that's working for him. That's really interesting, And I kind
of just like filed that one away for later. But
(07:18):
I also, of course, like any good person on LinkedIn
should followed Nick Power and started like looking at some
of his posts, and that brings me, I would say,
closer to this weird LinkedIn circle that then create I
get invited to some group that I guess existed like
a month or two beforehand, and I found out that
there's like I don't know, fifty or sixty people who
are already kind of pushing this like, oh, LinkedIn is
(07:40):
not a great place, let's try to make it a
better place. And as I started interacting with more of
these people, I learned like Brionna the Hamburger helper, one
of my best friends on LinkedIn, right, he had something
similar happen like around the same time period, and She's
just like, forget about it. I'm posting all the time now,
And it seems just like everybody you talked to around
this time period has just this weird shift of just
(08:02):
like that, we're done now, and I think we should
run a case study someday and like what actually happened
to make that occur. It's quite a phenomenon. But I
will say getting involved with that community it tilted my
feed to like much better. I was getting like really
boring audit stuff from my old jobs, like on.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
The other side of LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
C is because I've been doing this for like another
like a year, and people are like I get on
TikTok and They're like ough LinkedIn is the worst. It's
so cringe and I'm like, I wonder what people's speeds
are that aren't curated. Like every couple posts is Nick.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Power or you or Hamburger Helper.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
You know, I'll get like a couple like oh really insightful,
like things pdf ridiculous post It's.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Like and I feel like that keeps my day interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And like I went viral for calling chick uh like
salmon beach chicken and it was all across the internet.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
This is like a little bit before you came on,
and I'm like that that is the stuff that like
I am on.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I'm on beach chicken LinkedIn. So I wonder how the
other side.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Limbs I have. I imagine it's more boring. I'll just
go for that and that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
There is a reason LinkedIn lunatics exists because there are
some unhad takes of like.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Wait you you appeared there right, are we now?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
People like to put me back a Chambers Alice and
ROSSI on LinkedIn lunatics, but I will say in the
two times that I've been on there, they have been
bullied back off the platform by people being like this
is not like a lunatic. This is a very normal
post that or she was being sarcastic. Yes, thank you
read it because it's a scary place over there.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yes, I did appreciate that there were some defenders of
mine in my LinkedIn lunatics post as well, which I
like quite appreciated. But it was so funny how like
far these people missed the joke, you know, and it's
just like, well, that's.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It's just people just going over their heads.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, it's like it's what I expect of people who
are lurking on a subreddit that's making LinkedIn's shots like.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Life.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yes, right, So what does your creative process look like
when you're trying to like do your next post, you know,
like find your next creative outlet to say?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah, so I am always trying to laugh, right, I
had a couple of months bouts with cancer makes you
shift your priorities in life, and for me, it's just
like I want to enjoy every moment I have as
much as I can because we don't know how much
of it that we have. Sorry to get depressing. It's
the most depressing thing I'll say on the rest of
this podcast. So, like when something.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Part of your story, you should talk about it.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Thank you. So when something funny happens at work, like
I'll often just immediately put it away as something that's
like maybe I can make a post in that, and
it's become a meme with some of my colleagues of
just like, oh, hey, check LinkedIn in three months, I'm
gonna post about this when something funny.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I say my brain is broken because someone will say something,
I'm like, oh.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
That would be a really good LinkedIn post, and like
I talk about other people needing a life girls much.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Brass, Oh my gosh, I totally like will say that
as a joke. Not all of these interactions become LinkedIn posts, right.
Some of it is just because my teammates know me
and we think it's funny to think about this. But
sometimes it's like very real. Like I made a post
a couple weeks ago that was like, if a director says,
you know, you can include me if you think it's valuable,
(11:15):
I mean, I don't want you.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I laugh because I'm like the amount of times I
am a director of marketing and I often say.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That to people and I'm like, I don't want to come.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And the reason, honestly that I posted that is I'm
walking out of the building in Boulder for the day,
going through the kitchen to felt my water bottle, and
the kitchen shares a door with a conference room that
a director's in, and I heard him say those words verbatim,
and his tone of voice was very much like you
better not invite.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Me to that met right between the lines.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Well, I'm just I'm like just laughing in the moment
like that would be an actual funny LinkedIn post. And
I walk out of the building and I think I
like fired the post off before I even like turn
my car on to drive away, and it was just
like people are jumping on an immun Yes, there's a
lot of generous interpretations here, like the director is giving
autonomy and maybe that like this is a true thing.
They want them to decide on their own because they
trust in their employees. But who cares about nuance. It's
(12:09):
a funny joke, right, So, like I just threw it
out there, and anybody who like approached it level headedly,
I was like, you're right, You're absolutely right. Also, no
room for nuance here, This is a joke. I'm sorry.
Please give me the like emogi and move on and
so like those things.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And people get upset with me about my beach chicken thing,
like how dare like the whole post was about how
my toddler will not eat fish, so I had to
stam in for dinner.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
But he will eat beach chicken and he like eats
the whole thing. And I said, it's motherhood is just marketing.
Know your audience.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
There were people in my comments, how dare you lie
to the children of the world.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
That's not the that's not the worst thing we're lying
to our kids about front.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I was ninety percent of my parenting is gas lighting
my child. I'm like, you don't want to know the rest.
But I mean I made it onto the Today Show
and the headline was like full of controversy. Yes, I'll
have to send you the article because you will laugh
so hard.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You're better than LinkedIn lunatics. I want to hit the
Today Show.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was a poll.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Going on on the Today Show of like, do you
think it's okay to lie to children?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Okay, not that your post is not interesting, but do
you think that Maybe it was a slow news day
for the Today Show had to.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Be a slow I said that, I said, it's been
a weird week. It must have been a slow news
day because I don't understand, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I mean, I still get messages today they're like, hey,
beach chicken girl.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Okay, I wrote that on a Saturday, closed my laptop.
What about my life by Sunday? Shit was crazy?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
So yeah, I do know that feeling. We can get
into that in a bit, I bet. But the on
the content stuff, sorry, we're a little far afield there
on the content. There's other stuff that's longer boiling as well,
Like I have a dock of just half baked funny
ideas that I have in a doc, like something will
frustrate me at work, and I think I can spin
that into a cheeky post later, like I'll half write
(14:04):
it down, but most of it just kind of sits
there because sometimes it takes like another life circumstance or
a work circumstance or something to occur for me to
be like, oh, that's how I like bring that post home.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Right, I'm hearing a lot of content ideas together.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes, absolutely, like that's and also, you know I notice
people doing this thing that's like I'm Nikki and I
post about stuff follow me here, and I was just like,
that's real estate for a joke. And so I like
always I've grabbed that idea and it's just like dash yass,
I'm bill and joke and like you make it hyperlinkable
because that actually works, like we've ab tested, like yeah,
(14:40):
but it's just like it's another opportunity. So it's always
like I'm always trying to build like thee hundred percent
posts and then like that little extra ten percent nugget
at the end because like now people like come to
expect that, which can be both both the blessing and
a curse at this point, But then I use a curse.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You talk about the curse of being interesting, which I
always thought was really intriguing.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What does that mean to you?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
So when the posts start taking off and your lots
of it is baked in humor, what I would find
is when I would post about something serious, something that
would be like not a joke topic to me, Like
an example is I'm like really big on color accessibility
and data products. One of my best friends was colorblind,
so I was familiar with this problem very early in life.
And when I realized that, like you can just use
(15:23):
some different freaking colors and make your data more accessible
to people. You should just do it, right. So I
make a post about that, and once the comments are like, hey,
where's the jokes?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And it's like, oh, well, this wasn't funny, clown.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Like I'm at the circus, not the library, right and
so and so I'm like, ah, geez. And so now
there's like this, there's this expectation of quality, like like,
if I write a shitty post, it has to be
like intentionally shitty, Like there's no room to miss, right,
the joke has to be that it's bad. If it's
just a bad post, then people are like what the
heck you?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Man?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Like there is higher right, So when people expect you
to be interesting like in these posts all the time,
it kind of makes the content development process a little
more difficult because like, how do you I'm just a human.
I don't I joke about always writing bangers. I don't
write like not everything is going to swing for the fences.
And also at the whims of the algorithm, I was
(16:19):
just going.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
To say almost that exact sentence, I just came out
that we are really really at.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
So yeah, so it's a it's a it's a blessing
because it gives the eyeballs and a platform and people
are interested in what I have to say for I
don't know what reason, but yeah, the curse is that
like the expectation I mean, and it's it's come go
to LinkedIn. Now, this is my platform, and I need
to make people entertained, because that's really fair. I've self
proclaimed my self decloue of the circus, right.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I think a lot of creators across multiple platforms feel
very pinged down into like, oh, well, you're the person
that talks about this, talk about this, so I feel
like everyone goes into that. I actually just wrote a
post recently about how life on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
He was a creator that talked about like how you
can find enjoyment and just a normal life in a
nine to five and then he quit his job to
go full contact creation and gave it a ninety five.
And when he did that, people felt very betrayed.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And it's like, oh yeah, I talked about how he
could have done that differently.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So it's like, you can change your content, but you
have to do it slowly and very strategically. Once you
are so pinned down into this is what you talk about.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Like if I started just baking goods every day and
being like I'm now a chef and we're talking about it,
people would be like what. But if I started being like, hey,
I'm on this journey to like you know, marketing post marketing,
post cookie marketing.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
It would naturally, you know, come up. But you can't
just like done with that onto the next.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Absolutely, yeah, And so like the on that the posting
different kind of stuff, Like there's this advice out there
that's like calaying and swimming it like pick your niche.
I have been very much like trying to be chaotic
for that specific reason, like and that's the niche.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
It's chaos.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Take it right, because then you can't pin me down
because if I if I have five niches, you're never
gonna notice if I sneak a six in there, right,
And so that gives me.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
A lot of strategy. And that's exactly what I talk about,
Like you can have a no strategy strategy. You could
be like I didn't want to pick a niche. I
picked all of them, and that's my strategy. So but yeah,
you just go into that knowing.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That my strategy is succinctly inform plus entertain in either
the data analytics space or the LinkedIn life poke at
the influencers world. But that's my that's my two by
two basically.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Right, And so you picked your content pillars, and that's
the first thing I do with a lot of clients
that I work with is like, what are your pillars?
What can you talk about constantly without getting burnt out?
Just because you're in data analytics here you talk about
it all the time. Some people are like, yeah, I
could talk about this all day. Some people are like, Eh,
it's my day job and I don't want.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
To talk about it. I want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Fishing, cooking, Yes, that cool. Pick your niche, talk about it.
I'm in marketing, and some marketers like want to leave
their marketing job and never.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Talk about marketing. Again. I love talking about marketing. That's
my whole personality. So like, that's a niche I picked.
And sometimes I talk about beach chicken. So but I
tie it back to marketing.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I so wish I had watched the Today Show and
saw the beach chicken poll. I do actually think I
might have seen your profile picture on LinkedIn lunatics before.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I met you, though I can't say for certain, but
they're big fans of me appearances. I'm now I think
three now Major three three is.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Out there trick on LinkedIn lunatics.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I love that your headline You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Actually, so like one of my posts that went viral
was the fact that I said, like, if you see
edited in my post, no you didn't, Like I have
a chronicle condition, like a chronic condition that like I
can't see a grammar error until I hit posts and then.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
All just looking at me. And now that's why my
headlines is edited. It is We're like, that should be
your headlined. It should be edited. And I was like,
that's actually great idea.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
So it's been like that since I take every good
headline idea and I applied immediately, even change my profile
picture to animated thunder God's fine.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Well that I was actually going to give you a
ship for traging your profile picture because we as creators
are supposed to not do that because once we have
a profile picture, that is your goddamn picture for the
next decade.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Chaos is the brand, right like chaos is the brand
because like me and a few of my other creators
back at Chambers, Alice and Rossie. We're all in a
group chat and we're like, can we change our photo?
And everyone's like no, they're like that green background for you,
that's it, that's what I recognize.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I'll design them for you. I'll run the prompts.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Perfect green in my background. No one would really.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Care that much, but it's got to be the green bubble.
So it's the is it the color people recognize? So
you could change your face because you think I could
change like a completely different person in there and just
keep the color and see.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Actually a good like what if it's just you, like
and it's just green? We might have try this out.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Give me a minute, Give me a minute. I'll go
get the photo. I'll get the camera. I'll get you
a get high quality shot for that. That's uh. Actually,
you mentioned that group chat that you had. We have
a group chat with Brooks sweet Ar, Brianna Nick Power,
and we're just like, it's one of the funniest like
threads I've ever been involved in my life. And it's
just like because of this weird LinkedIn stuff. So it's
(21:22):
like it's pretty cool, like how these connections grow.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
You build this community and you know that leads me
to say, like, you've said that followers don't equal community,
So what do.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
You mean by that?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Because you built this community of creators, but you know,
it doesn't mean that your followers are necessarily that community.
What have you noticed about building an actual connection versus
just chasing the numbers on a screen.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, it's a really good question. So I come from
a place of privilege that I have worked in big
tech for a long time. So this means whenever I
post a job hosting, it's going to get impressions and
I'm going to get a whole lot of followers, a
whole lot of connection requests immediately. I don't often accept
all of those connection requests, right, but they still end
up as my followers and will be along for the ride.
(22:06):
I have to assume that they're not there because they're
necessarily interested in me or what I'm posting. Right, they
followed me because they saw a job role by recruiters.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
And hr people do really really well on the platform.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Exactly right, because they that grows naturally. You click follow
as soon as you see a job posting because you're
interested in that one, or you just want more. It's like,
why the platform exists, It's fine. That makes sense to me.
And so part of the rationale for my blinkwent eighty
two posts, which I don't know if I've properly carut
off to your shirt, but yeah, rocking that one today
was just like I had posted like two roles, two
(22:40):
pretty popular roles within the past week, and I was
sitting on like fifteen hundred on red connection requests or
something like that, and I was just like, these people
don't really like me for me. What if I look
for people who like me for me via commenting Blink
twent eighty to two and all caps on a post
that I made on a random Saturday, you know. And
so that that to me was just like I'm going
to turn this on my head because is like, before
(23:01):
I was getting followers at scale, what if I could
get connections at scale basically, because if you're going to
connect with me because you get to comment the name
of one of the most profane bands in existence because
it gave you a little nostalgic kick or you just
thought it was cheeky, you are my people. Welcome to
the circle. Let's build a community around I always.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Say, come for the humor, stay for the vibes or
stay for the insights, Like it's just really.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Hating all these chat Gypt is killing the word vibes
for me because you said every every chat Gypt post
that I that's clearly Chatgypt, like you just read it
for a mile away at this point. It's just it
always drops vibes in there somewhere to the point that
I'm just like, I'm just gonna avoid this word now slowly.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Becoming a gen z er. It really is like vibes.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It says a lot to the uh to how popular
the word vibes is across the world right that it
shows said a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
And that's but that's because I'm addicted to TikTok, which
is another story for another day. It's funny because I
don't post on TikTok. That is why that is my
break from my posting of LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So LinkedIn is like my job. I take b talk
is my doom strolling.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I take a break from being a content creator by
going to watch other content creators. What was that?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Like?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I know, I was like the other day I said,
I take a break from big screen to look at
medium screen, to like take a break on little screen.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
And sometimes at the end of the day, I treat
myself with big, big screen. So true.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
And if I have to order like airplane tickets, it's
the laptop screen.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
And there's certain things that you can, like psychopath behavior
is do like paying bills on little screen.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah, yes, absolutely, booking concert tickets on little screens? No,
thank you?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, Mike, what are you doing?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
That's cringing right now because that's the only way that
they've ordered concert tickets before. But I digress.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And it's like, just looking at all the data, I
would love to see just charts of like this is
where people do the most things and be like that
would actually be really interesting. Speaking of data analytics, it's
not exactly the funniest topic in the world on its own.
How did you start interjecting humor into something so dry
and what was the reaction?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Like? Yeah, So I'm like I realized a long time
ago at Google that data analysts have some like common
pain points that transcend their companies or teams or whatever.
And a lot of this content is like you're putting
data into a spreadsheet and twisting it around and getting
it into numbers. And so I started trying to like
(25:18):
play into those shared frustrations amongst analysts. Like a specific
example of this is in my first week or two
at Netflix, I was talking to my teammate Chris, and
he was talking about how they delivered data packs to
their stakeholders. And data packs are effectively a big old
spreadsheet with lots of numbers in them, right, because you
just you don't know the number you want, so you
(25:38):
just get all the numbers. Is kind of the conventional
wisdom around it. And it's a product that you'll find
in like less mature analytics shops. But it's part of
the learning journey, right. It seems like everybody goes through
this data packs era. So when I told him, oh,
I'm very familiar with data packs. I've lost sleep over
them myself, he was like shocked, right because he thought
(25:59):
that this was just a unique to his world problem.
And so I let him know, like, no, there's lots
of things like just wait till they go up and
start asking you for the customized PowerPoint dex, right, Like
that's true, I can promise you that. And so I
started putting those elements like into the posts that I'm
making to just try to like if I can find
a shared frustration in a post, it's probably gonna do
(26:19):
okay rights And I'm always I'm not going for like
belly laughs necessarily, but I'm going for that guy gets
it right, Like that's coolutely what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
No, I love that because that's the best way to
relate to your audience is to find the paypoints that
people relate to.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I do it when I talk about millennials, like, you know,
if you loved this, how's your job in marketing going?
You know, like things like.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
That, And it's just it's those little things that connect
us as humans, like, oh, we've never had an individual
experience in our whole life, like if someone out there
has had it, and it's the way to connect. And
then on that point, have you faced any pushback from
either colleagues or other industry folks about your online persona
or your style content colleagues?
Speaker 3 (27:02):
No, not really, I don't have any pushback. I do
have like when I go to campus, people will clock
me as Bill from LinkedIn, and I'll like dive under
the nearest desk as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We got to get a shirt and a hat built
from LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
I just walk through campus on it. It's a great
I mean, I joke about the dive in the desk.
It's a great icebreaker way to meet peop because I
always am just like oh gosh, and I you know,
I play it like, oh man, I'm so sorry that
you had saw my LinkedIn post. And so it's a
good icebreaker. And like my manager you know, is aware
of like what I'm doing there. But I should say,
like LinkedIn is the last cup I fill, right, Like
I have to do my day job. I have to
(27:35):
do my job as a dad. I have to do
my job as a husband, as a dog owner. My
physical health, my mental health, all that stuff needs to
get filled up like before I do the LinkedIn stuff.
So I think the general expectation with colleagues is just like, hey,
as long as I'm still performing my job at a
high level, like we don't really care what you do.
And that really aligns with like Netflix's culture to be
honest with you. So it's been pretty it's pretty nice
in that way from industry folks. Yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely.
(27:57):
You know, I think when you we use this metaphorlier
like I'm treating it like a curcus and they're following
the rules of a library, right, you're going to and
you're gonna rub feathers and like even at this point,
my following is so large that like anything I post
is just gonna like some hate or some like nuhuh
person is just going to show up in the comments
just to like do it. And so I've come to
(28:18):
expect that at a at a micro level.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And how do you handle that pushback from like trolls
in your comments.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I mean, if it's if it's clearly trolly, I just
don't engage with it, right, you don't feed the trolls.
That's like less than number one on the internet. If
it's like if it's a valid point, you know, like
I'll recognize it as a valid point and like put
my counter to it or what have you. But like
those people I find are engaging in good faith and well,
you're quite often going to like find a common ground.
Like it's pretty evident to me at this point, like
(28:47):
if I see a top level comment, that's like, we're
not going to find a resolution on this one, Like
you're just you're just here too.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
I do the exact same, Like I will. Absolutely you
are more than welcome to disagree with my points. Yes,
as long as you're doing it in good faith.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Like if you're just in there being like you're stupid
and this is dumb and I hate you, I'm not
doing it.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I tell people to block me a lot, I mean,
and and I'm saying it not ironically. Would do it?
You don't. LinkedIn's a big place. You don't need to
see me in your feet. It's fine. Like if I
called you that.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Free to scroll past, just roll on by. You didn't
need to stop by. You're just going to start seeing
more of my posts because that's how the algorithm works.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Congrats, Yeah, roll is like comments on my posts. It's like,
thanks for the engagement, bro. You know, it's just like.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I'm just now going to start popping up on your feelings.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
It's a great way to see more of me.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
It's like, So, I mean, when it comes to that,
for someone who wants to start posting but might be
worried about, you know, trolls or balancing personality and professionalism,
what's your advice for them.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I know it's scary to put yourself out there, and
I know it's scary to put like your true self
out there. But for me, the logic loop goes, my
true self is the one that's going to work. And
I say this from like a I know, I'm really
privileged when I say this because I've been employed this
entire time. But to me, if I post something on
LinkedIn and somebody, even an employer, doesn't like it, that's
(30:09):
kind of an excellent screening mechanism for me because like
they're probably not going to like other elements of my
personality either if they just didn't like that one LinkedIn post, Right, Like,
that's the trade off, you know, the both the pro
and the con of showing your true self there on LinkedIn.
So it's that little bit of just you know, having
the courage to do it, which I it's not a
little bit, it's a it's a big leap of faith.
(30:29):
I recognize that as well. But like, as for motivation
as a why to take it, everybody's playing in straight
professional every single person, right, And if you're making it
a little bit interesting, bringing a little levity to the situation,
making someone's life a little bit brighter, the algorithm is
going to reward you because it doesn't know how to
handle us yet. Like the link when you two a
thing I am convinced. There were people on the LinkedIn
(30:51):
side being like, what the heck is going on with
this post? Right? It just breaks every single conventional rule,
and then the algorithms like, well to the top, right,
And so I would just say like, try it, give
it a shot, you know, like try to post something
that's just a little bit eh, uncomfortable. You might like it.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Right, They might end up going viral. They might say
beach chicken. What are the upsides and the downsides of
going viral? You know, it seems to be a dream
of everyone like, oh, I'd love to go viral, but
then those of us who have actually gone viral know
the downsides and know the attention can be be a lot.
What is your take on them?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, it's so fresh and recent memory because I thought
I had gone viral. I had successful post, you know,
like half million impression posts that kind of thing that
I have like lots of likes and whatever. But viral
is also fast, and so when I made that that
Blanquinity two post and it goes crazy. Immediately, I'm looking
at my phone just being like, oh my god, what
(31:50):
is going on here? I'm opening my messages and the
phone is getting hot because there's too many in there
that it's freezing. And then I start accepting friend requests
connection requests so fast that we're just like, hey, you
can't keep up. You cannot keep up with it. And
then with mine, with my thing, you know, this is
tough to talk about, and I'm like, if you may,
if you use my template, I don't mean to give
(32:11):
you any guilt here, but like, for context with what
I was doing on that post, it was very much
what I said earlier is just like find people with
like minded, like connections and basically recognizing the fact that
I had a ton of connection requests in the hopper
that I probably wasn't going to accept because they were
just looking for jobs. I didn't need to juice my followers.
I need to juice my connections. If I want to
know that, I'll just post job postings every day for
(32:33):
the next month and I'll be at fifty thousand followers
or whatever. Yeah, probably pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And so taking from that, what I'm thinking is go
viral for the thing that you want to connect with
people about.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Don't just get viral to go viral like you saw
someone else go viral for that thing, and you want
to go viral, because then you're just gonna have a
bunch of people they connect with you that were just
interested in that that might not be your personality, but
you went viral for your personality and I went viral
for my personality, and I'm like, welcome to the show.
(33:04):
And that's the good part about it.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Yes, And then unfortunately people were tagging me in that
post those posts to give me credit, which I really appreciate.
Thank you for the credit. But this is the downside
of going viral here is people are expecting me to
come in and engage in these posts, like I'm some
sort of like engagement ferry where I come in and
I'll give my blessing for the like and the comment
because like that I was tagged in. And what I
know from gaming the algorithm for multiple months now, like
(33:30):
if you tag somebody in a post, they have to
engage with it really quickly or the algorithm is gonna
be like aa am, no way not happen in pal
And so some of these posts are coming in at
like three in the morning, when I like I am
very asleep, or in the morning when I'm working out,
or when I'm at work, like doing my job, and
so I would look at my notifications and I'd see, like,
eight hours ago, somebody used this template and they got one.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I get tag a lot, as like marketers to follow
people that are like on LinkedIn, and like I don't
see it till forever later, and I can't interact with everyone.
When I first got on the platform, I was like
liking everyone. Oh my god, I appreciate it. And I
still do appreciate everyone that does that.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I just can't.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I don't have the time and the bandwidth to interact
with every single one, like thank you for tagging me?
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yes, it's I do appreciate it. If you're still watching
this podcast, because we haven't bored you to death already,
like thank you for those tags. I love that you
love what I'm posting. But it it.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Goes back said if we're not inact.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
The other thing is we get too many notifications. You
just don't see some LinkedIn just like yeah, yesterday it was.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Like so and so common and not something. I looked
at it and it was like the post you were
tagged in three weeks ago, and I'm like, you.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Never saw this, yeah, never get a notification about it?
You see or someone like comments in that thread and
tags you, and someone else likes it and it's like
they liked a comment from four weeks ago on a
post that was from eight weeks ago or something, and
it's just like, whoops, I missed that one, totally missed it.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yep. So we're not trying to be rude.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
We just you know, we really we really are. I mean,
if you want rudeness, look for the comment sections of
my posts. When someone disagrees with you.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I'm just like giving people hell.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I had one guy I wrote a post and he
was like, does your arm get tired from patting yourself
on the back all day?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
And I said no, I switch hands. So I was like,
so sometimes I like to need the trolls. I might
give them a little snack.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Oh that's so true, I mean. And yeah, I mean,
in your defense, I did go to LinkedIn lunatics and
respond to a lot of the posts, and I definitely
like got their ire and it was the very much
like oh god, he's real. That you could tell because
they all scattered, you know, as soon as I was
replying to stuff, and then they sort of.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Braver soul than I, because I, like I stopped reading
half of the comments was like, can't do it, no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I grew up on Xbox Live before there were rules.
I've heard it all about me. I don't care, right,
And plus these Reddit people, they can't I have like
what I would consider a really good life, you know,
like a family that loves me, a job I.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Enjoy, Like they can't take anything from they can't. I
actually I used to be more of a sensitive soul,
probably a year ago. I've grown thicker skin from taking
the hate and like tru.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
We have to write, and I mean especially a lot
of love.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
From your community, the people that truly really love your content.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I'll have if someone comes and taxed me, I'll have
five like killer bees in my comments, like how dare
you talk to me again?
Speaker 3 (36:18):
That is true? So that's a huge pot.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, I'm like, thank you, community, And so I have
a lot of people come to defense for me, which
does help a lot. But I have one of the
benefits of this is that I can take critiques and
criticism a lot better than I probably could have before
I got on this platform.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, and I think you know it's it's going to
be even harder for you as a woman on the platform.
I'd like, I'm still thinking about Brooks post for from
my Instagram stuff a couple of weeks ago, just like
the nasty things that you receive, so like I recognize
even for me, like I have just an advantage in
like not being a woman on LinkedIn, right, and so like,
good on you. I don't know why you all keep
doing it, but like I'm glad you do, and I'm
(36:57):
going to be here to support you the whole way.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
We like to show up. So what else is lighting
you up right now? Where whether it's at work or
outside of work.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
You've got your dogs, you know, your family, and one
of my favorite things that you have is your company.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
With your mother.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
He's worth Sharon and I have cookies on the way
to my house right now from Sharon. I'm so excited.
I'm obsessed with the brand, like just the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It's so kind
and I wish I wish the cookies would have got there.
They'll probably be there tomorrow, I expect, So I wish
they got there.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I would have just been eating them on.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Here on the camera. Yeah I would, I would. Yeah.
I love your live reaction to them. Either on a
podcast or like, I don't linked.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Right there, I'm just eating cookies on my podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
So before I talk about the cookies, I have to
say my todther is potty trained now. So just like
big Life upgrade, just really really appreciate that. Yeah life
this weekend, Oh you are, Oh boy, good luck. It
went pretty well for us. But it's just not changing
diaperses so clutch and I'm enjoying that at this point considerably.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
We're trying to get this one out of die before
we bring the next one in in.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
I got it. Yes, yes, yes, that that's a good
plan evens out. Yeah, that's just it's just one child
would sayers for a.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Long perot over to the next one.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
So there's a fun data visualization in there, and somebody
can make the I love it. So the cookie stuff, Yeah,
I have a cookie business with my mom. When I
went to college and then later in my career, she
would mail me these cookies and I would share them
with people because there was just so many of them,
and eventually the reaction to them was so positive that
(38:33):
I thought perhaps people weren't just buttering me up. These
might actually be a quality product. So in twenty nineteen,
after I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and like on
the surgery bed, I'm like, I want to foster dogs,
and I want to give mom a cookie business if
I make it to the other side of this thing.
And so we did the cookie business, but like she
was still working full time at Walmart, so we just
did it slow. Like I didn't really market stuff. When
(38:56):
I did market my dad would be like, Billy, what
the hell are you doing cookies? Cookies?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
You know she's gotta come home and cook all these cookies.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, and you know his point is not invalid. I
will say, like, that's very that's very fair. So I
I am consciously, you know, pulled back on marketing or
trying to like move them. We only really sold cookies
in like Thanksgiving Christmas time, which is not uncharacteristic of
cookie companies I've since learned. But the company itself is
really low cost. We we have basically zero dollars for
(39:26):
the bakery that we use. It's just like insurance, square
space fees and things like that. So we just kind
of let it go and we would sell some cookies
every Christmas or whatever. And then last year, my mom
retires and she you know, I wanted to give her
some time to enjoy that retirement was well earned after
a long career as a store manager at Walmart. But
then a couple months ago, around the same time I
(39:47):
started posting more on LinkedIn, I'm like, this is just
like bleeding thirty five forty five bucks a month out
of a checking account, and we'd probably do something with this,
and decided to start talking to my mom about like
what like a reboot of the whole thing looks like.
And and it goes slow, right because we're still just you know,
letting her do her own thing at her own pace
and figuring out new things like how we're going to
(40:09):
ship more efficiently or more cheaply and things like that.
So I'm building this LinkedIn following during the same time,
and so this is like the hidden sixth lane. You know,
I was doing a data analytics fatherhood comedy like all
this other stuff killer and it's yes, yes, it's like
the six stuff here is like what happens if I
just kind of launched the relaunch the cookies under my
(40:30):
like LinkedIn channel. And so this is just so like
funny about when you work with your your family as coworkers.
It's you. You run into the same like coworker frustrations,
but you have to handle it differently because you're your family.
And my mom al will certainly watch this podcast. I
love you so much, Mom, Corey. I think it's just
so emblematic of that experience. Like we had been talking
(40:52):
for a few weeks about how I'm gonna drop this
LinkedIn post and like tag the cookies and and tag
her as well so that she can onto it bousyagra
and everything. So Sunday night, I call her. I'm like, hey, mom,
we're going to do this post like first and tomorrow
it's going to be my morning post, So like, can
you be ready because I need you to engage with
it because of that algorithm thing we talked about earlier, right,
And she's like, yep, yep, sounds good. I'll be ready.
(41:14):
So the next morning, I wake up, I work out
a shower run down in my computer to go to
launch this post before I walk the dogs, and I
call my mom and she doesn't answer. I call my house.
My dad answers, he says, oh, yeah, she's at breakfast.
She with like her friend, and I'm like, okay, cool,
Like call my mom a few more times, and then
I get a text from her because she doesn't want
(41:34):
to be rude. I guess at the breakfast and answer
the phone. It says like, sorry, I'm at breakfast, and.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
I'm like like, yes, I'm aware.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I'm trying to like, yeah, I know, I mean, and
I literally said, like, it's a tough day to do
a two hour breakfast mom, And so I decided to
hold on the post. I go walk the dogs, I shower,
I'm getting ready to leave to go to work, and
I go back down on my computer and I'm like,
I'm just going to post this without her tag. And
then as I'm about to hit post, of course, she
calls me and she's like, oh, okay, like what are
you trying to do. I'm like trying to get you
(42:01):
to like something on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
On brand for moms.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
On your phone and she's like, yeah, yeah, I do.
And so she pulls her car off somewhere because she
was driving away from breakfast and like I'm like, okay,
I'm ready, I'm hit that. She's like I'm ready, and
I hit the post and she engages with it, and
then the post does quite well and we got like
thousands of dollars in orders. I'm very, very happy, incredible.
The reaction to it was unbelievable. If you ordered.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
My husband like, look how good these cookies look. He
was like, you're going to share it? Are cookies worth Sharon?
I'm I was like, I'm pregnant right now. I looked
at that picture of the cookies and I was like,
I need that cookie.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Good news. Hopefully they're there, like by the end of
today or maybe tomorrow, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
It was like I will like be like running. My
mom is calling me right now, which is so funny.
That's very brand for mom. Mom.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
So I answered and ask if she wants some cookies
because you.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Look up I should send her that. She'll be like, yes,
I would love some cookies. But anyways, So.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Wrapping up, if there's anything one takeaway that you help
listeners leave with hearing your story, hearing all of your.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Advice, what is that?
Speaker 3 (43:10):
It's two things. You can learn anything and you can
make anything funny. And I encourage doing both as much
as possible.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I love that. So if people want to follow you,
where can they find you?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
What?
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Like, this is your time to plug pitch anything you
want to.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Do okay LinkedIn only for me right now hit that
follow button because I have dopamine tied to it and
goes right up as that number goes up. And also
we've been doing monthly live streams. Me and my friend Morgan,
who is also a awesome people analyx practitioner, have been
doing live streams called Dashboard Confessionals. We're doing our second
one soon. It'll be after this or before this podcast airs,
(43:47):
but look for those announced kind of middle of the month.
Each month we're going to try to do a monthly
commitment to those. You can also find the Dashboard Confessionals
podcasts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We've been uploading them
there so we'd be throwing it in as.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
That name very own brand. Love.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Yeah, it actually came from the community. Someone put that
in one of our comments and said, like, you should
call it Dashboard Professionals, and like that was the day
I texted Morgan and I was like, that's the brand.
We should just do this, And so it's amazing, another testament.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
To the community saying material and like posts and everything
has been amazing. It's where my headline came from. It's
where a lot of my content comes from so thank
you to the community that gives us our ideas and
supports us. And thank you Bill for being on the podcast.
I really appreciate it, of.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Course, Thank you so much, Nikki. It was a pleasure that.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Wraps up another episode of Talk Digital to Me. Bill
gave us a look at how to make LinkedIn actually
fun again without sacrificing your credibility, from embracing chaos as
your niche to building the true community to knowing when
not to feed the trolls. His approach is proof that
you can be strategic but still be yourself online. If
(44:53):
you enjoyed this episode, leave a review on Apple Podcasts,
share it with a friend or colleague, and don't forget
to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to me now,
until next time, post with personality, find your people, and
remember LinkedIn doesn't have to be boring.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
See you soon.
We've all scrolled LinkedIn and thought, Wow, this is boring,
endless corporate jargon, self congratulatory posts, and content that feels
more like a press release than human conversation. Today, I'm
joined by Bill Yost, Netflix data analytics leader, chronic LinkedIn
poster and one of the ringleaders of weird LinkedIn. Bill
(00:20):
has built a loyal audience by breaking the platform's unspoken rules,
mixing humor with honesty, and proving that even the driest topics, yes,
data analytics, can go viral when you show up as yourself.
In this episode, we're talking about the upside and downside
of going viral, the curse of being interesting, how to
(00:42):
balance personality with professionalism, and why followers don't always equal community. Plus,
we get into his cookie business with his mom and
why it's the perfect extension of his personal brand. I'm
your host, Nicole Ramirez, and this is Talk Digital to Me,
where we uncover the latest in digital marketing, tech, AI innovation,
(01:04):
and the strategies for personal and professional growth. Let's dive in.
(01:34):
Today's guest is someone who proves that even the driest
topics like data analytics, can turn into Internet gold with
the right mix of humor and honesty. Bilio studied business
information Tech at Virginia Tech, started his career in consulting
and audit analytics, and then made his way to Google
in people analytics. He thought he'd retire there, but a
(01:56):
dream opportunity at Netflix changed that plan.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Colorado with his wife, daughter.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
And two dogs, Bill has become a self described chronic
LinkedIn poster. As I like to call him the shit
poster of LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
We're talking today about going viral, maybe, how you don't
actually want to, what it means to be interesting online,
and how to write funny content about the world's driest topics.
So thank you Bill for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Thank you so much for having me. Nikay, I really
appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So you've described your brain as breaking to the point
that you've started posting chronically on LinkedIn, and I feel
that what was going on for you when that started?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And what was that spark?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah? So I think important quick back context is I
was at Google for a very long time and in
that time I kind of made a brand for myself
as doing like goofy, creative off the wall stuff in
this like data analytics niche like that involves like making
parody songs about like some of the problems that data
analysts go through regularly and sending them around to just
get a kick out of it, or just funny memes
(03:03):
or stories or responses to group. I am because the
people analytics ecosystem at Google was like between one hundred
and one hundred and fifty people, So I had a
big audience to do this, right. Yeah, And as my
my tenure there was coming to an end, I realized
I had this giant creative energy that I no longer
had someplace to like put it, no outline for it,
no outlet. I mean, yeah, I'm going to go to
(03:23):
Netflix and I'm going to be goofy, right, But it
just like there's a ramp up period. And also it's
a much smaller team just inherently. I knew that going
into it, So I had a smaller audience.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You got it for weird slowly at a time.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
And oh my gosh, you're totally Although I will say,
with great credit to my manager, I don't know how
if I'll ever watch this or not, but he definitely
took it in stride. One of our very first team
meetings was like, I have a very specific way that
I like to build culture and I'd like to just
go for it. And I outlined it to him and
he was like, yeah, that sounds good. So my weird
turned on at Netflix quite early. I will say my
teammates can attest to that. But between those jobs, I'm
(03:58):
looking at LinkedIn and I've been on LinkedIn because I'm
all over ten years now, and I realized I had
never really gotten significant benefit from it. I had like
made some posts, I had interacted a little bit. Now
this is somewhat to my credit or detriment, however you
want to frame it. I was not always on LinkedIn
trying to actively engage and like make it the platform
I wanted it to be. But I started going on
(04:18):
there more often, and I'm seeing these posts from like
the people analytics influencer community, if you will, just like
the big names in this space, and I'm just kind
of bored by them, like they're not just really they're
not really entertaining me, they're not really informing me. And
I just started thinking, like what if I could do both.
Like I'm funny at work, I have this weird niche energy,
this is an audience, Like there's data analytics wanks out
(04:39):
there on LinkedIn? Sure, what if I just start doing weird,
funny posts. And this is around late February, and I
just started posting things to just see if I could
get some laughs from people. And I did. It started
to like people were giggling it stuff. It was a
pretty good good response. And then I started my Netflix
job and I realized that my CA leagues there had
(05:00):
a lot of the same kind of critiques of the
LinkedIn life. Basically like there's a lot of people doing
the work, but they're not all necessarily on LinkedIn making
posts talking about.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It all the time.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
In fact, I would say that, like the best data
analysts out there, I'm not the best data analyst. I
wish i was. It is probably like not posting on
LinkedIn ever, right, Like that's probably true in every single
field out Yeah. So basically, I'm like, this place is boring.
I want to try to make it better and kind
of like open up a spotlight to what I would
call the practitioners in this space, right, the people who
(05:32):
are looking at it and going, I'm not really getting
stuff that helps me in my day to day on
this platform. And if they can't get something useful, maybe
they could get a laugh, And that was kind of
my approach on the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I think LinkedIn is very much in need of some
humor on the platform. And you know, right when you
started coming up, it really coincided with this rise of
what everyone is calling weird LinkedIn and I love weird
LinkedIn And so you know when this all happened, what
do you think shifted the platform to be like this
and why do you think it resonated so widely with
people to lean into the weird?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
All right, first, nerd reference, are you a Spider Man
fan into the Spider Verse?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I like Marvel. I wouldn't say I'm like a total
nerd for it, but I do appreciate on market.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You know, I'll do the like the fifteen thousand foot
explanation the Spider Verse movies, there's this idea of a
cannon event that happens all across the Spider Man realities,
whether they each there's a Spider Man in each one, yes,
and it's you know, it's like it's like Uncle Ben dying.
Basically sorry spoiler alert if you didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Know, that's on you.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So that cannon event kind of permeates everyone's realities in
a way that's kind of like inexplicable. And I was
thinking about that in the context of weird LinkedIn, because
it seems like, around the same time my brain is
breaking and I'm starting to put all this weird shit
on there, my algorithm is now tilting towards a lot
of other people who are starting to put weird stuff
around at the same time. I mean, this for me
was really Nick shows up right. I'm in Hawaii in
(06:57):
late February, early March something like that, and Lena is
still asleep, and I'm just fooling around on a stupid
post on LinkedIn, like Game of Thrones mashed up with
analytics or something like that, and I see people start
posting about this Nick Power guy lowercase stuff, texting like
he or posting like he text his friends. And I'm like, huh,
that's working for him. That's really interesting, And I kind
of just like filed that one away for later. But
(07:18):
I also, of course, like any good person on LinkedIn
should followed Nick Power and started like looking at some
of his posts, and that brings me, I would say,
closer to this weird LinkedIn circle that then create I
get invited to some group that I guess existed like
a month or two beforehand, and I found out that
there's like I don't know, fifty or sixty people who
are already kind of pushing this like, oh, LinkedIn is
(07:40):
not a great place, let's try to make it a
better place. And as I started interacting with more of
these people, I learned like Brionna the Hamburger helper, one
of my best friends on LinkedIn, right, he had something
similar happen like around the same time period, and She's
just like, forget about it. I'm posting all the time now,
And it seems just like everybody you talked to around
this time period has just this weird shift of just
(08:02):
like that, we're done now, and I think we should
run a case study someday and like what actually happened
to make that occur. It's quite a phenomenon. But I
will say getting involved with that community it tilted my
feed to like much better. I was getting like really
boring audit stuff from my old jobs, like on.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
The other side of LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
C is because I've been doing this for like another
like a year, and people are like I get on
TikTok and They're like ough LinkedIn is the worst. It's
so cringe and I'm like, I wonder what people's speeds
are that aren't curated. Like every couple posts is Nick.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Power or you or Hamburger Helper.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
You know, I'll get like a couple like oh really insightful,
like things pdf ridiculous post It's.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Like and I feel like that keeps my day interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And like I went viral for calling chick uh like
salmon beach chicken and it was all across the internet.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
This is like a little bit before you came on,
and I'm like that that is the stuff that like
I am on.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I'm on beach chicken LinkedIn. So I wonder how the
other side.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Limbs I have. I imagine it's more boring. I'll just
go for that and that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
There is a reason LinkedIn lunatics exists because there are
some unhad takes of like.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Wait you you appeared there right, are we now?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
People like to put me back a Chambers Alice and
ROSSI on LinkedIn lunatics, but I will say in the
two times that I've been on there, they have been
bullied back off the platform by people being like this
is not like a lunatic. This is a very normal
post that or she was being sarcastic. Yes, thank you
read it because it's a scary place over there.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yes, I did appreciate that there were some defenders of
mine in my LinkedIn lunatics post as well, which I
like quite appreciated. But it was so funny how like
far these people missed the joke, you know, and it's
just like, well, that's.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It's just people just going over their heads.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, it's like it's what I expect of people who
are lurking on a subreddit that's making LinkedIn's shots like.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Life.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yes, right, So what does your creative process look like
when you're trying to like do your next post, you know,
like find your next creative outlet to say?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah, so I am always trying to laugh, right, I
had a couple of months bouts with cancer makes you
shift your priorities in life, and for me, it's just
like I want to enjoy every moment I have as
much as I can because we don't know how much
of it that we have. Sorry to get depressing. It's
the most depressing thing I'll say on the rest of
this podcast. So, like when something.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Part of your story, you should talk about it.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Thank you. So when something funny happens at work, like
I'll often just immediately put it away as something that's
like maybe I can make a post in that, and
it's become a meme with some of my colleagues of
just like, oh, hey, check LinkedIn in three months, I'm
gonna post about this when something funny.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I say my brain is broken because someone will say something,
I'm like, oh.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
That would be a really good LinkedIn post, and like
I talk about other people needing a life girls much.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Brass, Oh my gosh, I totally like will say that
as a joke. Not all of these interactions become LinkedIn posts, right.
Some of it is just because my teammates know me
and we think it's funny to think about this. But
sometimes it's like very real. Like I made a post
a couple weeks ago that was like, if a director says,
you know, you can include me if you think it's valuable,
(11:15):
I mean, I don't want you.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I laugh because I'm like the amount of times I
am a director of marketing and I often say.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That to people and I'm like, I don't want to come.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And the reason, honestly that I posted that is I'm
walking out of the building in Boulder for the day,
going through the kitchen to felt my water bottle, and
the kitchen shares a door with a conference room that
a director's in, and I heard him say those words verbatim,
and his tone of voice was very much like you
better not invite.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Me to that met right between the lines.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Well, I'm just I'm like just laughing in the moment
like that would be an actual funny LinkedIn post. And
I walk out of the building and I think I
like fired the post off before I even like turn
my car on to drive away, and it was just
like people are jumping on an immun Yes, there's a
lot of generous interpretations here, like the director is giving
autonomy and maybe that like this is a true thing.
They want them to decide on their own because they
trust in their employees. But who cares about nuance. It's
(12:09):
a funny joke, right, So, like I just threw it
out there, and anybody who like approached it level headedly,
I was like, you're right, You're absolutely right. Also, no
room for nuance here, This is a joke. I'm sorry.
Please give me the like emogi and move on and
so like those things.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And people get upset with me about my beach chicken thing,
like how dare like the whole post was about how
my toddler will not eat fish, so I had to
stam in for dinner.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
But he will eat beach chicken and he like eats
the whole thing. And I said, it's motherhood is just marketing.
Know your audience.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
There were people in my comments, how dare you lie
to the children of the world.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
That's not the that's not the worst thing we're lying
to our kids about front.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I was ninety percent of my parenting is gas lighting
my child. I'm like, you don't want to know the rest.
But I mean I made it onto the Today Show
and the headline was like full of controversy. Yes, I'll
have to send you the article because you will laugh
so hard.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You're better than LinkedIn lunatics. I want to hit the
Today Show.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was a poll.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Going on on the Today Show of like, do you
think it's okay to lie to children?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Okay, not that your post is not interesting, but do
you think that Maybe it was a slow news day
for the Today Show had to.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Be a slow I said that, I said, it's been
a weird week. It must have been a slow news
day because I don't understand, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I mean, I still get messages today they're like, hey,
beach chicken girl.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Okay, I wrote that on a Saturday, closed my laptop.
What about my life by Sunday? Shit was crazy?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
So yeah, I do know that feeling. We can get
into that in a bit, I bet. But the on
the content stuff, sorry, we're a little far afield there
on the content. There's other stuff that's longer boiling as well,
Like I have a dock of just half baked funny
ideas that I have in a doc, like something will
frustrate me at work, and I think I can spin
that into a cheeky post later, like I'll half write
(14:04):
it down, but most of it just kind of sits
there because sometimes it takes like another life circumstance or
a work circumstance or something to occur for me to
be like, oh, that's how I like bring that post home.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Right, I'm hearing a lot of content ideas together.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes, absolutely, like that's and also, you know I notice
people doing this thing that's like I'm Nikki and I
post about stuff follow me here, and I was just like,
that's real estate for a joke. And so I like
always I've grabbed that idea and it's just like dash yass,
I'm bill and joke and like you make it hyperlinkable
because that actually works, like we've ab tested, like yeah,
(14:40):
but it's just like it's another opportunity. So it's always
like I'm always trying to build like thee hundred percent
posts and then like that little extra ten percent nugget
at the end because like now people like come to
expect that, which can be both both the blessing and
a curse at this point, But then I use a curse.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You talk about the curse of being interesting, which I
always thought was really intriguing.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What does that mean to you?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
So when the posts start taking off and your lots
of it is baked in humor, what I would find
is when I would post about something serious, something that
would be like not a joke topic to me, Like
an example is I'm like really big on color accessibility
and data products. One of my best friends was colorblind,
so I was familiar with this problem very early in life.
And when I realized that, like you can just use
(15:23):
some different freaking colors and make your data more accessible
to people. You should just do it, right. So I
make a post about that, and once the comments are like, hey,
where's the jokes?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And it's like, oh, well, this wasn't funny, clown.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Like I'm at the circus, not the library, right and
so and so I'm like, ah, geez. And so now
there's like this, there's this expectation of quality, like like,
if I write a shitty post, it has to be
like intentionally shitty, Like there's no room to miss, right,
the joke has to be that it's bad. If it's
just a bad post, then people are like what the
heck you?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Man?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Like there is higher right, So when people expect you
to be interesting like in these posts all the time,
it kind of makes the content development process a little
more difficult because like, how do you I'm just a human.
I don't I joke about always writing bangers. I don't
write like not everything is going to swing for the fences.
And also at the whims of the algorithm, I was
(16:19):
just going.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
To say almost that exact sentence, I just came out
that we are really really at.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
So yeah, so it's a it's a it's a blessing
because it gives the eyeballs and a platform and people
are interested in what I have to say for I
don't know what reason, but yeah, the curse is that
like the expectation I mean, and it's it's come go
to LinkedIn. Now, this is my platform, and I need
to make people entertained, because that's really fair. I've self
proclaimed my self decloue of the circus, right.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I think a lot of creators across multiple platforms feel
very pinged down into like, oh, well, you're the person
that talks about this, talk about this, so I feel
like everyone goes into that. I actually just wrote a
post recently about how life on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
He was a creator that talked about like how you
can find enjoyment and just a normal life in a
nine to five and then he quit his job to
go full contact creation and gave it a ninety five.
And when he did that, people felt very betrayed.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And it's like, oh yeah, I talked about how he
could have done that differently.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So it's like, you can change your content, but you
have to do it slowly and very strategically. Once you
are so pinned down into this is what you talk about.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Like if I started just baking goods every day and
being like I'm now a chef and we're talking about it,
people would be like what. But if I started being like, hey,
I'm on this journey to like you know, marketing post marketing,
post cookie marketing.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
It would naturally, you know, come up. But you can't
just like done with that onto the next.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Absolutely, yeah, And so like the on that the posting
different kind of stuff, Like there's this advice out there
that's like calaying and swimming it like pick your niche.
I have been very much like trying to be chaotic
for that specific reason, like and that's the niche.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
It's chaos.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Take it right, because then you can't pin me down
because if I if I have five niches, you're never
gonna notice if I sneak a six in there, right,
And so that gives me.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
A lot of strategy. And that's exactly what I talk about,
Like you can have a no strategy strategy. You could
be like I didn't want to pick a niche. I
picked all of them, and that's my strategy. So but yeah,
you just go into that knowing.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That my strategy is succinctly inform plus entertain in either
the data analytics space or the LinkedIn life poke at
the influencers world. But that's my that's my two by
two basically.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Right, And so you picked your content pillars, and that's
the first thing I do with a lot of clients
that I work with is like, what are your pillars?
What can you talk about constantly without getting burnt out?
Just because you're in data analytics here you talk about
it all the time. Some people are like, yeah, I
could talk about this all day. Some people are like, Eh,
it's my day job and I don't want.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
To talk about it. I want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Fishing, cooking, Yes, that cool. Pick your niche, talk about it.
I'm in marketing, and some marketers like want to leave
their marketing job and never.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Talk about marketing. Again. I love talking about marketing. That's
my whole personality. So like, that's a niche I picked.
And sometimes I talk about beach chicken. So but I
tie it back to marketing.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I so wish I had watched the Today Show and
saw the beach chicken poll. I do actually think I
might have seen your profile picture on LinkedIn lunatics before.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I met you, though I can't say for certain, but
they're big fans of me appearances. I'm now I think
three now Major three three is.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Out there trick on LinkedIn lunatics.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I love that your headline You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Actually, so like one of my posts that went viral
was the fact that I said, like, if you see
edited in my post, no you didn't, Like I have
a chronicle condition, like a chronic condition that like I
can't see a grammar error until I hit posts and then.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
All just looking at me. And now that's why my
headlines is edited. It is We're like, that should be
your headlined. It should be edited. And I was like,
that's actually great idea.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
So it's been like that since I take every good
headline idea and I applied immediately, even change my profile
picture to animated thunder God's fine.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Well that I was actually going to give you a
ship for traging your profile picture because we as creators
are supposed to not do that because once we have
a profile picture, that is your goddamn picture for the
next decade.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Chaos is the brand, right like chaos is the brand
because like me and a few of my other creators
back at Chambers, Alice and Rossie. We're all in a
group chat and we're like, can we change our photo?
And everyone's like no, they're like that green background for you,
that's it, that's what I recognize.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I'll design them for you. I'll run the prompts.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Perfect green in my background. No one would really.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Care that much, but it's got to be the green bubble.
So it's the is it the color people recognize? So
you could change your face because you think I could
change like a completely different person in there and just
keep the color and see.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Actually a good like what if it's just you, like
and it's just green? We might have try this out.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Give me a minute, Give me a minute. I'll go
get the photo. I'll get the camera. I'll get you
a get high quality shot for that. That's uh. Actually,
you mentioned that group chat that you had. We have
a group chat with Brooks sweet Ar, Brianna Nick Power,
and we're just like, it's one of the funniest like
threads I've ever been involved in my life. And it's
just like because of this weird LinkedIn stuff. So it's
(21:22):
like it's pretty cool, like how these connections grow.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
You build this community and you know that leads me
to say, like, you've said that followers don't equal community,
So what do.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
You mean by that?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Because you built this community of creators, but you know,
it doesn't mean that your followers are necessarily that community.
What have you noticed about building an actual connection versus
just chasing the numbers on a screen.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, it's a really good question. So I come from
a place of privilege that I have worked in big
tech for a long time. So this means whenever I
post a job hosting, it's going to get impressions and
I'm going to get a whole lot of followers, a
whole lot of connection requests immediately. I don't often accept
all of those connection requests, right, but they still end
up as my followers and will be along for the ride.
(22:06):
I have to assume that they're not there because they're
necessarily interested in me or what I'm posting. Right, they
followed me because they saw a job role by recruiters.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
And hr people do really really well on the platform.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Exactly right, because they that grows naturally. You click follow
as soon as you see a job posting because you're
interested in that one, or you just want more. It's like,
why the platform exists, It's fine. That makes sense to me.
And so part of the rationale for my blinkwent eighty
two posts, which I don't know if I've properly carut
off to your shirt, but yeah, rocking that one today
was just like I had posted like two roles, two
(22:40):
pretty popular roles within the past week, and I was
sitting on like fifteen hundred on red connection requests or
something like that, and I was just like, these people
don't really like me for me. What if I look
for people who like me for me via commenting Blink
twent eighty to two and all caps on a post
that I made on a random Saturday, you know. And
so that that to me was just like I'm going
to turn this on my head because is like, before
(23:01):
I was getting followers at scale, what if I could
get connections at scale basically, because if you're going to
connect with me because you get to comment the name
of one of the most profane bands in existence because
it gave you a little nostalgic kick or you just
thought it was cheeky, you are my people. Welcome to
the circle. Let's build a community around I always.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Say, come for the humor, stay for the vibes or
stay for the insights, Like it's just really.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Hating all these chat Gypt is killing the word vibes
for me because you said every every chat Gypt post
that I that's clearly Chatgypt, like you just read it
for a mile away at this point. It's just it
always drops vibes in there somewhere to the point that
I'm just like, I'm just gonna avoid this word now slowly.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Becoming a gen z er. It really is like vibes.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It says a lot to the uh to how popular
the word vibes is across the world right that it
shows said a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
And that's but that's because I'm addicted to TikTok, which
is another story for another day. It's funny because I
don't post on TikTok. That is why that is my
break from my posting of LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So LinkedIn is like my job. I take b talk
is my doom strolling.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I take a break from being a content creator by
going to watch other content creators. What was that?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Like?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I know, I was like the other day I said,
I take a break from big screen to look at
medium screen, to like take a break on little screen.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
And sometimes at the end of the day, I treat
myself with big, big screen. So true.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
And if I have to order like airplane tickets, it's
the laptop screen.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
And there's certain things that you can, like psychopath behavior
is do like paying bills on little screen.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah, yes, absolutely, booking concert tickets on little screens? No,
thank you?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, Mike, what are you doing?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
That's cringing right now because that's the only way that
they've ordered concert tickets before. But I digress.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And it's like, just looking at all the data, I
would love to see just charts of like this is
where people do the most things and be like that
would actually be really interesting. Speaking of data analytics, it's
not exactly the funniest topic in the world on its own.
How did you start interjecting humor into something so dry
and what was the reaction?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Like? Yeah, So I'm like I realized a long time
ago at Google that data analysts have some like common
pain points that transcend their companies or teams or whatever.
And a lot of this content is like you're putting
data into a spreadsheet and twisting it around and getting
it into numbers. And so I started trying to like
(25:18):
play into those shared frustrations amongst analysts. Like a specific
example of this is in my first week or two
at Netflix, I was talking to my teammate Chris, and
he was talking about how they delivered data packs to
their stakeholders. And data packs are effectively a big old
spreadsheet with lots of numbers in them, right, because you
just you don't know the number you want, so you
(25:38):
just get all the numbers. Is kind of the conventional
wisdom around it. And it's a product that you'll find
in like less mature analytics shops. But it's part of
the learning journey, right. It seems like everybody goes through
this data packs era. So when I told him, oh,
I'm very familiar with data packs. I've lost sleep over
them myself, he was like shocked, right because he thought
(25:59):
that this was just a unique to his world problem.
And so I let him know, like, no, there's lots
of things like just wait till they go up and
start asking you for the customized PowerPoint dex, right, Like
that's true, I can promise you that. And so I
started putting those elements like into the posts that I'm
making to just try to like if I can find
a shared frustration in a post, it's probably gonna do
(26:19):
okay rights And I'm always I'm not going for like
belly laughs necessarily, but I'm going for that guy gets
it right, Like that's coolutely what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
No, I love that because that's the best way to
relate to your audience is to find the paypoints that
people relate to.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I do it when I talk about millennials, like, you know,
if you loved this, how's your job in marketing going?
You know, like things like.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
That, And it's just it's those little things that connect
us as humans, like, oh, we've never had an individual
experience in our whole life, like if someone out there
has had it, and it's the way to connect. And
then on that point, have you faced any pushback from
either colleagues or other industry folks about your online persona
or your style content colleagues?
Speaker 3 (27:02):
No, not really, I don't have any pushback. I do
have like when I go to campus, people will clock
me as Bill from LinkedIn, and I'll like dive under
the nearest desk as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We got to get a shirt and a hat built
from LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
I just walk through campus on it. It's a great
I mean, I joke about the dive in the desk.
It's a great icebreaker way to meet peop because I
always am just like oh gosh, and I you know,
I play it like, oh man, I'm so sorry that
you had saw my LinkedIn post. And so it's a
good icebreaker. And like my manager you know, is aware
of like what I'm doing there. But I should say,
like LinkedIn is the last cup I fill, right, Like
I have to do my day job. I have to
(27:35):
do my job as a dad. I have to do
my job as a husband, as a dog owner. My
physical health, my mental health, all that stuff needs to
get filled up like before I do the LinkedIn stuff.
So I think the general expectation with colleagues is just like, hey,
as long as I'm still performing my job at a
high level, like we don't really care what you do.
And that really aligns with like Netflix's culture to be
honest with you. So it's been pretty it's pretty nice
in that way from industry folks. Yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely.
(27:57):
You know, I think when you we use this metaphorlier
like I'm treating it like a curcus and they're following
the rules of a library, right, you're going to and
you're gonna rub feathers and like even at this point,
my following is so large that like anything I post
is just gonna like some hate or some like nuhuh
person is just going to show up in the comments
just to like do it. And so I've come to
(28:18):
expect that at a at a micro level.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And how do you handle that pushback from like trolls
in your comments.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I mean, if it's if it's clearly trolly, I just
don't engage with it, right, you don't feed the trolls.
That's like less than number one on the internet. If
it's like if it's a valid point, you know, like
I'll recognize it as a valid point and like put
my counter to it or what have you. But like
those people I find are engaging in good faith and well,
you're quite often going to like find a common ground.
Like it's pretty evident to me at this point, like
(28:47):
if I see a top level comment, that's like, we're
not going to find a resolution on this one, Like
you're just you're just here too.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
I do the exact same, Like I will. Absolutely you
are more than welcome to disagree with my points. Yes,
as long as you're doing it in good faith.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Like if you're just in there being like you're stupid
and this is dumb and I hate you, I'm not
doing it.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I tell people to block me a lot, I mean,
and and I'm saying it not ironically. Would do it?
You don't. LinkedIn's a big place. You don't need to
see me in your feet. It's fine. Like if I
called you that.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Free to scroll past, just roll on by. You didn't
need to stop by. You're just going to start seeing
more of my posts because that's how the algorithm works.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Congrats, Yeah, roll is like comments on my posts. It's like,
thanks for the engagement, bro. You know, it's just like.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I'm just now going to start popping up on your feelings.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
It's a great way to see more of me.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
It's like, So, I mean, when it comes to that,
for someone who wants to start posting but might be
worried about, you know, trolls or balancing personality and professionalism,
what's your advice for them.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I know it's scary to put yourself out there, and
I know it's scary to put like your true self
out there. But for me, the logic loop goes, my
true self is the one that's going to work. And
I say this from like a I know, I'm really
privileged when I say this because I've been employed this
entire time. But to me, if I post something on
LinkedIn and somebody, even an employer, doesn't like it, that's
(30:09):
kind of an excellent screening mechanism for me because like
they're probably not going to like other elements of my
personality either if they just didn't like that one LinkedIn post, Right, Like,
that's the trade off, you know, the both the pro
and the con of showing your true self there on LinkedIn.
So it's that little bit of just you know, having
the courage to do it, which I it's not a
little bit, it's a it's a big leap of faith.
(30:29):
I recognize that as well. But like, as for motivation
as a why to take it, everybody's playing in straight
professional every single person, right, And if you're making it
a little bit interesting, bringing a little levity to the situation,
making someone's life a little bit brighter, the algorithm is
going to reward you because it doesn't know how to
handle us yet. Like the link when you two a
thing I am convinced. There were people on the LinkedIn
(30:51):
side being like, what the heck is going on with
this post? Right? It just breaks every single conventional rule,
and then the algorithms like, well to the top, right,
And so I would just say like, try it, give
it a shot, you know, like try to post something
that's just a little bit eh, uncomfortable. You might like it.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Right, They might end up going viral. They might say
beach chicken. What are the upsides and the downsides of
going viral? You know, it seems to be a dream
of everyone like, oh, I'd love to go viral, but
then those of us who have actually gone viral know
the downsides and know the attention can be be a lot.
What is your take on them?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, it's so fresh and recent memory because I thought
I had gone viral. I had successful post, you know,
like half million impression posts that kind of thing that
I have like lots of likes and whatever. But viral
is also fast, and so when I made that that
Blanquinity two post and it goes crazy. Immediately, I'm looking
at my phone just being like, oh my god, what
(31:50):
is going on here? I'm opening my messages and the
phone is getting hot because there's too many in there
that it's freezing. And then I start accepting friend requests
connection requests so fast that we're just like, hey, you
can't keep up. You cannot keep up with it. And
then with mine, with my thing, you know, this is
tough to talk about, and I'm like, if you may,
if you use my template, I don't mean to give
(32:11):
you any guilt here, but like, for context with what
I was doing on that post, it was very much
what I said earlier is just like find people with
like minded, like connections and basically recognizing the fact that
I had a ton of connection requests in the hopper
that I probably wasn't going to accept because they were
just looking for jobs. I didn't need to juice my followers.
I need to juice my connections. If I want to
know that, I'll just post job postings every day for
(32:33):
the next month and I'll be at fifty thousand followers
or whatever. Yeah, probably pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And so taking from that, what I'm thinking is go
viral for the thing that you want to connect with
people about.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Don't just get viral to go viral like you saw
someone else go viral for that thing, and you want
to go viral, because then you're just gonna have a
bunch of people they connect with you that were just
interested in that that might not be your personality, but
you went viral for your personality and I went viral
for my personality, and I'm like, welcome to the show.
(33:04):
And that's the good part about it.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Yes, And then unfortunately people were tagging me in that
post those posts to give me credit, which I really appreciate.
Thank you for the credit. But this is the downside
of going viral here is people are expecting me to
come in and engage in these posts, like I'm some
sort of like engagement ferry where I come in and
I'll give my blessing for the like and the comment
because like that I was tagged in. And what I
know from gaming the algorithm for multiple months now, like
(33:30):
if you tag somebody in a post, they have to
engage with it really quickly or the algorithm is gonna
be like aa am, no way not happen in pal
And so some of these posts are coming in at
like three in the morning, when I like I am
very asleep, or in the morning when I'm working out,
or when I'm at work, like doing my job, and
so I would look at my notifications and I'd see, like,
eight hours ago, somebody used this template and they got one.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I get tag a lot, as like marketers to follow
people that are like on LinkedIn, and like I don't
see it till forever later, and I can't interact with everyone.
When I first got on the platform, I was like
liking everyone. Oh my god, I appreciate it. And I
still do appreciate everyone that does that.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I just can't.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I don't have the time and the bandwidth to interact
with every single one, like thank you for tagging me?
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yes, it's I do appreciate it. If you're still watching
this podcast, because we haven't bored you to death already,
like thank you for those tags. I love that you
love what I'm posting. But it it.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Goes back said if we're not inact.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
The other thing is we get too many notifications. You
just don't see some LinkedIn just like yeah, yesterday it was.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Like so and so common and not something. I looked
at it and it was like the post you were
tagged in three weeks ago, and I'm like, you.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Never saw this, yeah, never get a notification about it?
You see or someone like comments in that thread and
tags you, and someone else likes it and it's like
they liked a comment from four weeks ago on a
post that was from eight weeks ago or something, and
it's just like, whoops, I missed that one, totally missed it.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yep. So we're not trying to be rude.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
We just you know, we really we really are. I mean,
if you want rudeness, look for the comment sections of
my posts. When someone disagrees with you.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I'm just like giving people hell.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I had one guy I wrote a post and he
was like, does your arm get tired from patting yourself
on the back all day?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
And I said no, I switch hands. So I was like,
so sometimes I like to need the trolls. I might
give them a little snack.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Oh that's so true, I mean. And yeah, I mean,
in your defense, I did go to LinkedIn lunatics and
respond to a lot of the posts, and I definitely
like got their ire and it was the very much
like oh god, he's real. That you could tell because
they all scattered, you know, as soon as I was
replying to stuff, and then they sort of.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Braver soul than I, because I, like I stopped reading
half of the comments was like, can't do it, no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I grew up on Xbox Live before there were rules.
I've heard it all about me. I don't care, right,
And plus these Reddit people, they can't I have like
what I would consider a really good life, you know,
like a family that loves me, a job I.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Enjoy, Like they can't take anything from they can't. I
actually I used to be more of a sensitive soul,
probably a year ago. I've grown thicker skin from taking
the hate and like tru.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
We have to write, and I mean especially a lot
of love.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
From your community, the people that truly really love your content.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I'll have if someone comes and taxed me, I'll have
five like killer bees in my comments, like how dare
you talk to me again?
Speaker 3 (36:18):
That is true? So that's a huge pot.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, I'm like, thank you, community, And so I have
a lot of people come to defense for me, which
does help a lot. But I have one of the
benefits of this is that I can take critiques and
criticism a lot better than I probably could have before
I got on this platform.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, and I think you know it's it's going to
be even harder for you as a woman on the platform.
I'd like, I'm still thinking about Brooks post for from
my Instagram stuff a couple of weeks ago, just like
the nasty things that you receive, so like I recognize
even for me, like I have just an advantage in
like not being a woman on LinkedIn, right, and so like,
good on you. I don't know why you all keep
doing it, but like I'm glad you do, and I'm
(36:57):
going to be here to support you the whole way.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
We like to show up. So what else is lighting
you up right now? Where whether it's at work or
outside of work.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
You've got your dogs, you know, your family, and one
of my favorite things that you have is your company.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
With your mother.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
He's worth Sharon and I have cookies on the way
to my house right now from Sharon. I'm so excited.
I'm obsessed with the brand, like just the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It's so kind
and I wish I wish the cookies would have got there.
They'll probably be there tomorrow, I expect, So I wish
they got there.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I would have just been eating them on.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Here on the camera. Yeah I would, I would. Yeah.
I love your live reaction to them. Either on a
podcast or like, I don't linked.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Right there, I'm just eating cookies on my podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
So before I talk about the cookies, I have to
say my todther is potty trained now. So just like
big Life upgrade, just really really appreciate that. Yeah life
this weekend, Oh you are, Oh boy, good luck. It
went pretty well for us. But it's just not changing
diaperses so clutch and I'm enjoying that at this point considerably.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
We're trying to get this one out of die before
we bring the next one in in.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
I got it. Yes, yes, yes, that that's a good
plan evens out. Yeah, that's just it's just one child
would sayers for a.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Long perot over to the next one.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
So there's a fun data visualization in there, and somebody
can make the I love it. So the cookie stuff, Yeah,
I have a cookie business with my mom. When I
went to college and then later in my career, she
would mail me these cookies and I would share them
with people because there was just so many of them,
and eventually the reaction to them was so positive that
(38:33):
I thought perhaps people weren't just buttering me up. These
might actually be a quality product. So in twenty nineteen,
after I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and like on
the surgery bed, I'm like, I want to foster dogs,
and I want to give mom a cookie business if
I make it to the other side of this thing.
And so we did the cookie business, but like she
was still working full time at Walmart, so we just
did it slow. Like I didn't really market stuff. When
(38:56):
I did market my dad would be like, Billy, what
the hell are you doing cookies? Cookies?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
You know she's gotta come home and cook all these cookies.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, and you know his point is not invalid. I
will say, like, that's very that's very fair. So I
I am consciously, you know, pulled back on marketing or
trying to like move them. We only really sold cookies
in like Thanksgiving Christmas time, which is not uncharacteristic of
cookie companies I've since learned. But the company itself is
really low cost. We we have basically zero dollars for
(39:26):
the bakery that we use. It's just like insurance, square
space fees and things like that. So we just kind
of let it go and we would sell some cookies
every Christmas or whatever. And then last year, my mom
retires and she you know, I wanted to give her
some time to enjoy that retirement was well earned after
a long career as a store manager at Walmart. But
then a couple months ago, around the same time I
(39:47):
started posting more on LinkedIn, I'm like, this is just
like bleeding thirty five forty five bucks a month out
of a checking account, and we'd probably do something with this,
and decided to start talking to my mom about like
what like a reboot of the whole thing looks like.
And and it goes slow, right because we're still just you know,
letting her do her own thing at her own pace
and figuring out new things like how we're going to
(40:09):
ship more efficiently or more cheaply and things like that.
So I'm building this LinkedIn following during the same time,
and so this is like the hidden sixth lane. You know,
I was doing a data analytics fatherhood comedy like all
this other stuff killer and it's yes, yes, it's like
the six stuff here is like what happens if I
just kind of launched the relaunch the cookies under my
(40:30):
like LinkedIn channel. And so this is just so like
funny about when you work with your your family as coworkers.
It's you. You run into the same like coworker frustrations,
but you have to handle it differently because you're your family.
And my mom al will certainly watch this podcast. I
love you so much, Mom, Corey. I think it's just
so emblematic of that experience. Like we had been talking
(40:52):
for a few weeks about how I'm gonna drop this
LinkedIn post and like tag the cookies and and tag
her as well so that she can onto it bousyagra
and everything. So Sunday night, I call her. I'm like, hey, mom,
we're going to do this post like first and tomorrow
it's going to be my morning post, So like, can
you be ready because I need you to engage with
it because of that algorithm thing we talked about earlier, right,
And she's like, yep, yep, sounds good. I'll be ready.
(41:14):
So the next morning, I wake up, I work out
a shower run down in my computer to go to
launch this post before I walk the dogs, and I
call my mom and she doesn't answer. I call my house.
My dad answers, he says, oh, yeah, she's at breakfast.
She with like her friend, and I'm like, okay, cool,
Like call my mom a few more times, and then
I get a text from her because she doesn't want
(41:34):
to be rude. I guess at the breakfast and answer
the phone. It says like, sorry, I'm at breakfast, and.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
I'm like like, yes, I'm aware.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I'm trying to like, yeah, I know, I mean, and
I literally said, like, it's a tough day to do
a two hour breakfast mom, And so I decided to
hold on the post. I go walk the dogs, I shower,
I'm getting ready to leave to go to work, and
I go back down on my computer and I'm like,
I'm just going to post this without her tag. And
then as I'm about to hit post, of course, she
calls me and she's like, oh, okay, like what are
you trying to do. I'm like trying to get you
(42:01):
to like something on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
On brand for moms.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
On your phone and she's like, yeah, yeah, I do.
And so she pulls her car off somewhere because she
was driving away from breakfast and like I'm like, okay,
I'm ready, I'm hit that. She's like I'm ready, and
I hit the post and she engages with it, and
then the post does quite well and we got like
thousands of dollars in orders. I'm very, very happy, incredible.
The reaction to it was unbelievable. If you ordered.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
My husband like, look how good these cookies look. He
was like, you're going to share it? Are cookies worth Sharon?
I'm I was like, I'm pregnant right now. I looked
at that picture of the cookies and I was like,
I need that cookie.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Good news. Hopefully they're there, like by the end of
today or maybe tomorrow, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
It was like I will like be like running. My
mom is calling me right now, which is so funny.
That's very brand for mom. Mom.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
So I answered and ask if she wants some cookies
because you.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Look up I should send her that. She'll be like, yes,
I would love some cookies. But anyways, So.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Wrapping up, if there's anything one takeaway that you help
listeners leave with hearing your story, hearing all of your.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Advice, what is that?
Speaker 3 (43:10):
It's two things. You can learn anything and you can
make anything funny. And I encourage doing both as much
as possible.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I love that. So if people want to follow you,
where can they find you?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
What?
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Like, this is your time to plug pitch anything you
want to.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Do okay LinkedIn only for me right now hit that
follow button because I have dopamine tied to it and
goes right up as that number goes up. And also
we've been doing monthly live streams. Me and my friend Morgan,
who is also a awesome people analyx practitioner, have been
doing live streams called Dashboard Confessionals. We're doing our second
one soon. It'll be after this or before this podcast airs,
(43:47):
but look for those announced kind of middle of the month.
Each month we're going to try to do a monthly
commitment to those. You can also find the Dashboard Confessionals
podcasts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We've been uploading them
there so we'd be throwing it in as.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
That name very own brand. Love.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Yeah, it actually came from the community. Someone put that
in one of our comments and said, like, you should
call it Dashboard Professionals, and like that was the day
I texted Morgan and I was like, that's the brand.
We should just do this, And so it's amazing, another testament.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
To the community saying material and like posts and everything
has been amazing. It's where my headline came from. It's
where a lot of my content comes from so thank
you to the community that gives us our ideas and
supports us. And thank you Bill for being on the podcast.
I really appreciate it, of.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Course, Thank you so much, Nikki. It was a pleasure that.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Wraps up another episode of Talk Digital to Me. Bill
gave us a look at how to make LinkedIn actually
fun again without sacrificing your credibility, from embracing chaos as
your niche to building the true community to knowing when
not to feed the trolls. His approach is proof that
you can be strategic but still be yourself online. If
(44:53):
you enjoyed this episode, leave a review on Apple Podcasts,
share it with a friend or colleague, and don't forget
to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to me now,
until next time, post with personality, find your people, and
remember LinkedIn doesn't have to be boring.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
See you soon.
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