Make no mistake: LinkedIn is the potion, the key, the opportunity. The platform is a monster.

Make content on LinkedIn around your job, around your subject matter expertise. You’ll be stunned by the recruiters coming to you. LinkedIn content will change your life if you want a new job.

The thing that a lot of people need to focus on is where is the attention. Over the last few years, it’s been remarkable how much opportunity there is on LinkedIn. If you’re in this audience and you’re doing B2B marketing and you do not have a LinkedIn content strategy, you’re making a humongous mistake.

If you are not producing an enormous amount of content for LinkedIn, you are missing out on Facebook circa 2011. The organic reach of just posting on LinkedIn as if it was Facebook a decade ago.

It has gone away from being a recruiting tool to a content microphone.

Follow the Attention Before It Disappears

If nobody follows you, if you’ve never posted a piece of content on LinkedIn, your ability to put a piece of content, whether in long-form written word, video, or audio…The amount of organic reach that post will get, if you have even a couple of hundred connections, would blow your mind.

It’s most similar to 2007–2009 Twitter and 2011–2013 Facebook. The ROI on acting like a media company and not an advertiser on LinkedIn is staggering and will go away. This is one big game of cat and mouse.

Organic reach is through the roof right now. Early adopters feel it. It gets talked about. More people do it. Supply and demand of attention shifts. Ad prices go up. The marketplace becomes proper.

I’m going to give you another chance right now, because it’s happening right now. It’s called LinkedIn. You can have no followers, nobody knows you. You make a video, picture, written word, deck, something — you post it — and a lot more people than you think will see it…if it’s good.

Content Is the Way Out

Many people don’t have a lot of other options for their career because they’re not on the offense on LinkedIn.

What I want is for you to post 19 pieces of content tomorrow on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram because they will answer the things that are running through your head right now. If you made no content anywhere else and made pieces every day for LinkedIn that were specific to psychographic, demographic, location, age, gender — you will win.

I always tell people, if you make content on the internet as if you’re the TV show, not the commercials in between the TV show, you will get a disproportionate return on your investment.

Why You’re Not Posting Enough

People are insecure to post at 20. People are insecure to post at 40. Everyone still thinks it’s high school and everyone still thinks it’s junior high. There’s unlimited people here who are stuck and worried about posting because they’re worried about it not getting a lot of views or somebody in the neighborhood making fun of them.

You’re literally not posting, or more interestingly, you are posting because you are now all the PR agents of yourselves on social media. We are posturing for other people’s opinions. Your lack of action is exposing your insecurities.

If you’re educated, if you follow me, and you are not posting 10 to 15 pieces of content a day, your actions are exposing your insecurities. Anybody who makes fun of you for trying is in a crap place themselves and are trying to drag you into their crap.

Do you want to roll in crap with a crappy loser? Or do you want to ignore that and attack?

You’re Stuck Because of Fear, Not Reality

You value the opinions of people you don’t even like. You are valuing the opinion of people you don’t even like and you don’t even want to be like…You’re stuck in seventh grade.

What made you unhappy in middle school and high school is making you unhappy as an adult and you can’t see it. Every one of us is in a slump. Every one of us is not in a slump. The question is, do you believe you’re in a slump? It’s a bump in the road and you’re treating it like terminal cancer.

You’re nervous to ask out a girl because she might say no. You’re nervous in a job interview because you might not get it.

Nothing Sucks. It’s You

My friends, nothing sucks and nothing is awesome. It’s all you. Nothing sucks and nothing is awesome. It just is life, and how you show up is you, period. Stop complaining and pick accountability and optimism.

If you’re fully accountable, everything is your fault, even when it’s not, and you’re optimistic, even though everything sucks right now, you’re going to win in the end. Accountability and optimism leads the way.

If You Hate Your Situation, Leave

Got to apply to other jobs. Go post on LinkedIn and add value for others.

If you don’t have the power to change it, you’ve got the power to leave. Hate your job? Or have bad bosses? You’ve got to leave the company and start something else. But a lot of people want to stay in it and complain about it because they don’t think they have other options. There’s unlimited opportunities right now, and thousands of people who are 59 years old got hired today.

With AI, you can learn everything in two seconds. I don’t understand why people continue to choose negativity.

Impact Isn’t About Scale

If you’re giving, you can’t be taken advantage of. If you’re actually giving, you expect nothing in return. Giving is giving without expectation. Impact is not predicated on reaching millions. Impact is predicated on reaching one person.

There are people that have tons of followers that have impacted them very little, and there are people who have 500 followers who have impacted all 500 people immensely.

If you’re looking for impact, you don’t need to do it out loud and in public. You can do it for one person.

I urge you to start really be thinking about being great at producing written words, audio, and video per the ten platforms so that it’s contextual to the platform.

When somebody’s on LinkedIn, they’re in a business mindset. When they’re on Instagram, they’re in an entertainment mindset. The way you convey your message is extremely important.

The adjectives you use, the analogies you use, the examples you use — it has to be based on the psychology of where people are when they’re on that platform.

These platforms are not distribution channels. They are places you should tell stories.

If I’m trying to sell to a 42-year-old woman executive, what I put in front of her on Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn would be substantially different because of the psychology of her when she’s in that stream.

The Window Is Open, But It Won’t Stay Open

Because I’m yelling loud, half will do it, some will do it, one will do it, then it will get saturated. The attention will be matched by the amount of content. Ads will enter the ecosystem and dominate LinkedIn.

How many times do you need to see this happen? How do you think I dominated social? I lived it with search and with email, and then I said, “Okay, now I get it. I’m not making the same mistake when I see it.”

You are struggling to get leads, win RFPs, and get new business. The answer is LinkedIn right now. LinkedIn is uncomfortably underpriced organic, let alone paid. Go get it done and be on the offense.

The era of the individual empire is here, where anyone with a smartphone can build something really big.

Why is this happening now? We’ve hit critical mass. Social has now been around long enough. People have gotten enough influence and scale, and the entry points to anything now have been so changed.

Many years ago, we didn’t have Shopify or YouTube. We didn’t have TikTok. You couldn’t go viral. Like, you had to buy television ads for $10 million, and you had to pay Walmart $20 million to get in the store. Kids didn’t have $30 million to do that. Now, kids like me can post on organic—I’m still a kid—and grow.

Retail has been commoditized, attention has been commoditized, and now humans have as much attention, if not more, than companies spending on advertising. And my cost of entry for starting a sports agency, or a restaurant app, or a direct super wine brand, or an intellectual property, has collapsed. Anyone can do it.

Because distribution and media, those are the only catalogs. You needed commercials on TV to buy the cornflakes, and you needed Kmart and ShopRite to buy it. Now I can do the same thing on TikTok and Shopify for nothing. That’s why this is happening now and taking off.

MrBeast Is THE Example

Is MrBeast a prime example of the individual empire? He is THE example.

Logan Paul is another one. I came from a business lens to content. I had my own brand years before wine brands. But they did it bigger and better. Now, Beast has done it at the highest scale, and I didn’t even think Beast has even begun to actually cook. He’s super young. He’s got all of the leverage right now, and he’s CREATIVE. And being creative is being dangerous.

The infrastructure he’s building, the capabilities he’s building, it’s incredible and impressive.

Beast has the receipts. There’s a video of him sitting in his room when he started - he’s nice and cleanly shaved. He’s an inspiration because he did IT. And he did IT piece of content by piece of content by piece of content. This is why I’ve always loved him and watched him. You can go watch my first episode of Wine Library TV. I didn’t even have a mic or lighting, and it was filmed on a $300 camera.

Beast — and others with their empires — have done it bigger, badder, better.

What’s Unique About Today?

What’s unique about things today? I think it’s live streaming. Even Beast, he hangs out with streamers. The live streamer, the Twitch the Kick, the TikTok live, the YouTube live, that ecosystem, that whole world, the Kaids, the speeds, that whole world is happening. That’s an underpriced attention place.

All social networks are still underpriced. YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter/X. They’re all underpriced. You just have to be great at it. Early on, when they’re underpriced and nobody’s knowing about it, you have to be good at it to be huge. The more it gets bigger and everyone’s on it, you have to be GREAT. On Instagram right now, you have to be remarkable to break through. That’s supply and demand of attention.

The Creator IS the Studio

Friends, the creator IS the studio now. MrBeast has a studio. My team has a studio. We’re a production company. Everybody’s going to have a studio and everybody’s going to have a consumer package goods infrastructure, a marketing infrastructure, a supply chain infrastructure.

We’re making our own stuff here; I’m making my comic books. I invented VeeFriends characters. We created this story. We made this physical comic, and we sell it on live streaming. MrBeast and Steven Bartlett, Alex Cooper and Alix Earle and I… you’ll just see it over and over again. This is the beginning.

My book Crush It said that you can be an influencer in 2009, and that you can have a life making content on the internet. Now I’m telling you: Beast is the preview that you can build an empire on the back of a human.

@garyvee

Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk | Build your personal brand
Build your indiv…

Algorithm = Audience

Algorithm and audience are interchangeable. The algo is the black-and-white scorecard that you made for the audience. The algo is the report card. It’s the score. I make everything. When I say make it for the algo or I say “consumer centric” or audience, it’s all the same thing. It’s for the people. You need to know how the algo works. MrBeast talks about the audience, but he has always been Savant-level skilled at the thumbnail.

Beast Is the Preview, Not the Anomaly

MrBeast will be remembered as one of the pioneers of the individual empire: a human who built an audience who first loved it, scaled that, BeastGames is the scaled execution of what Jimmy (Donaldson) always wanted to do.

At first he had $5 to do it, then he had $5,000, then he had $50,000 - that was ‘wow’ on YouTube - then he had $100,000 and that was ‘wow wow’, and now he’s at the highest levels. But he’s also got a consumer product and he’s going to do everything he ever wants to do: non-profit, for profit.

Here’s what BeastGames really is: It made Hollywood realize it was all true along the way. There was this moment in Hollywood where it was, Yeah, you can be famous here but Beast Games is a lighting rod in culture and in Hollywood. It helps people like me and everyone else who is big on social and on the internet. It proved to everyone that you can easily translate from here to that screen because they’re all the same.

BeastGames is important and will also be looked back on as I think you’ll see more creators and entrepreneurs win in feature films, meaningful series, reality, scripted, non scripted. Listen, what inspires me, back to KIND WARRIOR, when this becomes a feature film, that’s me the creator. What I’m happy about is there are a lot of kids dreaming right now at 13, 14, 15 because of Jimmy’s work.

Why MrBeast Will Be Historically Successful

MrBeast will be one of the most financially successful entrepreneurs of this generation. He has a lot of talents.

1. We share the same skill in understanding context.

2. He has Mark Burnett’s talent in understanding production.

3. He has uncanny drive of winning the game, not doing it for the money.

4. He really, really, really understands how to entertain AND he’s very thoughtful about partnerships.

5. He’s simple. He knows that if he makes great stuff that people like to consume, everything will be OK.

6. He’s patient. In a world where a lot of people took their money from Google, Adsense, and YouTube revenue and bought Lambos and houses, he stayed in South Carolina and put all of the money into his next video so he could spend $1,000,000 on it…He spends six figures on a thumbnail!

The Individual Empire Is the Next Chapter

Influencers and content creators was a thing I saw as a real opportunity back in the day … the next chapter will be insane … soon we will see the “individual empire.” … It's already happening.

Humans are becoming multiple national empires — corporations — and the personal brand will expand into many business units.

This next chapter is remarkable and with AI and blockchain, the opportunities for those who seize the prize of leaning into their interests and talents and create awareness and entertainment & value and information around them and then surround that with a macro monetization later will reap the rewards.

In 2010, I predicted there would be so many people making $80,000 a year talking about gardening on the internet. And $65,000 talking about skateboarding. And $247,000 a year talking or writing about other stuff…

They don’t realize how much low-hanging fruit is coming. The opportunity is bigger than ever and more people need to go out and create content.

So, who is ready to build their solo empire; for the creators and entrepreneurs who are ready to finally monetize the attention that they’ve been able to garner through social media followings or email newsletters?

Give it time, be patient, because I’m very excited about all of this and what the individual empire economy will become.

Who’s ready to get “theirs”?

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Which part of the 'Individual Empire' excites you most: The content creation, the physical products (CPG), or the infrastructure? Hit reply and let me know where your head is at!

The DVL discipline will change the outcomes of so many of you. That’s DVL: depth, volume and live.

I’ve gotten 100+ DMs saying the exact same thing: “I am posting like you said but not growing,” then I go and check and people have posted once a day for three weeks, and expect to be Charli D’Amelio. My friends, it’s like everything in life: The discipline to actually produce high volume content and a system to help you do it (Google: “Garyvee content model deck pdf”) is the way to get actual results.

Want to “blow up” and live a life that’s so amazing? Use content as a driver for your success. You’ll get ready to make tons of content for years everyday and then maybe, just maybe, it will be there for you or your brand. You can’t complain or hope your way to success.

What do people get wrong with depth, volume, live? On depth, they don’t do it. On volume, they don’t do it. And on live, they don’t do it.

Fear is one thing, but lack of patience, lack of skills. I don’t think people understand thumbnails, the importance of the first few seconds of a video, hooks, cadence, and writing good copy. I don’t think they understand platforms.

My friends, please take advantage of these platforms. Posting on social networks is free. There is no other advertising medium in the world that’s free. Obviously, you can run ads on social media, but posting organically is free, and so many of you are missing that. Bring value to the audience over a sustained time.

@garyvee

Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk on Instagram: "Depth
Volume
Live

The DVL …

1. Depth: The Work Everyone Skips (And Then Wonders Why They’re Stuck)

So many of you want more followers and sales but don’t reply to a single DM or comment. From 2007-2011, I replied to every tweet I got. It’s how I got here. And I went on Summize before it was bought by Twitter and became Twitter search, and I searched for wine terms and answered peoples’ questions—deeply.

You want to build? Go deep with the few who are actually interested in what you are doing or saying or making. Taking for granted the few you have because you’re hoping for many is a huge mistake. Friends, please go to your last five posts and reply to every comment and go to your DM’s and engage with the few you got.

Eventually the numbers get too high to do it for every comment and DM, but if you have less than 10,000 followers, you need to be on this train. Answer all your DMs. People out here got like 13 fans, trying to get to a million, and don’t give a f*ck about their 13 fans.

Some of my boujee, rich, smart friends make fun of me for doing a two hour live show…but I’m going deep. Get in the trenches. Be a worm in the dirt.

I still believe in replying to everyone on Twitter. I still love responding to people ad hoc. What makes social media unique is the conversation element. I do think that in 2007, 2008, 2009, it was all hippie, nirvana land. It’s not that anymore. That leads to peoples’ different relationships with social media, but I get great enjoyment from engaging in communities.

And look, I’m very sorry to say this, but I do not believe that 98% of the people that are building content and audiences online care anything or very little about their audience. People don’t have the discipline to do the little things day by day without seeing results, without realizing they’re creating a movement.

I used to go to sleep at 4 AM. I’d wake up at 10 AM and get my six hours of sleep, but I was going hard. I wanted to go to sleep at night replying to everybody and every email. I thought that was imperative. I didn’t have a platform other than making real relationships. I believe in that today.

You also don’t need stardom. You need 10,000 true fans. Shoutout to Kevin Kelly, who wrote “1,000 true fans” back in 2008. That’s absolutely right and now I believe with inflation of the game, this is now 10,000 true fans, which is where it gets really interesting.

With 10,000 really hardcore people paying you $5 a month for a Substack or a Patreon or something different, or $5 tip each month, or a closed group, comes out to $50,000 a month or $600,000 a year. That puts you in the 1% globally.

My point is that 1,000 is now 10,000. If Kevin wrote this today, he would probably say 10,000, because it’s the same effort with the algorithms, with interest graph virality, screen time, social time, and inflation. Go deep, and get your loyal base.

2. Volume: You’re Not Posting Enough (And You’re on Too Few Platforms)

Everyone needs to post more often and on more platforms: YouTube Shorts, Facebook classic, Snapchat Spotlight, Substack, LinkedIn, X. You all need to be on more.

The problem with many people is they’re one dimensional or just on Instagram. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “posting too much.” You’re going to post tomorrow and nine people will see it. There’s eight billion people on Earth.

You need to be on seven platforms. I’m talking X, Facebook, and then inside of it: Facebook and Facebook Reels; Instagram and Instagram Reels. Tons of people should be doing stuff on Pinterest. LinkedIn is a monster. Facebook is still a monster. YouTube Shorts is a monster. YouTube long-form is a monster. There’s a lot going on.

This goes back to the merit. When I popped out in like 2006, 2007, 2008, most people actually thought I’d be gone in a year because I’m too much. People thought, OK, this is all sizzle. The reason I’m still here today is that I have enough to say.

And just “posting content” isn’t enough if you’re not really leveraging the full potential of a platform. With YouTube Shorts, yes, there’s real organic reach, but make sure you’re being smart about search-based titles to help keep your content more evergreen in the long run.

Because YouTube Shorts is a major opportunity. Unlike Instagram Reels, unlike TikTok, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. That YouTube Short can live for a very long time. When you name the video, think about naming it for people who are searching it. Just taking the video you’re doing on Instagram and TikTok, bringing it over to YouTube Shorts, and just naming it smartly, from a search perspective, will disproportionately grow the opportunity of your awareness and branding.

It’s a very, very big deal. So many of you are only comfortable with one or two platforms. Take seriously multiple platforms, seven different platforms, because every platform you’re not going hard at, is a missed opportunity. At the end of the day, you’re posting to create demand for your business, whether that’s selling deli sandwiches, sneakers, babysitting gigs, records, non-profit donations, or whatever you do.

There are social media posts I’ve posted four different times with a slightly different variation, and the first three got 70,000 views on average, and the fourth one got 6.3 million.

Look at MrBeast, the king of YouTube, and here’s what he’s telling you, which applies to all the platforms: make 100 videos and improve one specific thing with each upload, focusing on audience retention through better hooks, thumbnails, pacing, and payoffs, rather than aiming for perfection initially.

Is there a ceiling where volume hurts? No. It matters on individual creative, but with effort, allocation, belief in the system, and AI, there’s no ceiling. Keep posting. Everything needs to be operationalized: handles, process, and creativity.

Becoming one dimensional with where you post your content is a dangerous game. If you only stick to the one platform that is currently working for you then you will not be prepared for when those platforms become less relevant than the next.

Nothing lasts forever and you need to have as much presence on as many platforms as you can for when attention shifts.

And you can lean into what you’re good at, whether that’s video or writing or podcasts or something else. I can’t put two sentences together in my life. I didn’t try to become a great writer when the blogging thing happened, because I bet on my strengths instead.

3. Live: The Most Underrated Growth Lever on the Internet

If people understood what TikTok does — that you can be creating new fans all the time while going live — they’d be going live every day….all the time.

I’m always watching for under-priced distribution in media landscapes, and I couldn’t push you more to go on TikTok Live every day and spend 30 minutes with people who randomly show up to your live. I wish I did more of this…too bad I’m running 10 businesses, lol.

TikTok Live is a beast. If you went live every day, you’d be flabbergasted. There are moments when attention on a platform is misunderstood or underestimated.

There’s also social shopping within live. Friends, live social shopping is gonna explode even more in 2026. People are wondering: What do I sell? What should I do? Where do I do it? You need to devote five hours to learning about live shopping. Google it, use ChatGPT, study it. This is an incredible era where live shopping will become a huge opportunity for so many of you.

To do well with live, it’s about host strategy, self-awareness, and whether you are good at selling or not? A lot of people are funny, attractive, clever, knowledgeable, but not good at selling. That will hold you back.

You need a co-host. Look at QVC. The hosts know how to conduct the sale. On TikTok, you have to repeat the hook every five to fifty seconds. On Whatnot you can go deeper. Giveaway strategy matters. And you’ll know, before virality, that the signal you’re on the right path is sales. You see it fast: Read the comments, engage. That’s the data you need.

I’m obsessed with TikTok Live. A lot more people need to use social media lives the way streamers use Twitch. Everybody doesn’t go live because they think they have to do something. I think you should go live while you’re eating lunch.

There’s an incredible amount of discovery for your brand through live, because the longer you’re live, it’s showing up in the algorithm and non-followers are discovering you.

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Friends, I want to hear from you. Seriously. Whether you're in the trenches with 13 fans or scaling toward 10,000, hit reply to this email or jump into the Substack app to leave a comment. What’s your 2 cents on the DVL model? How many of your current followers’ names do you actually know? And are you actually 'posting and not growing,' or are you just not posting enough?