If you want to attract 7-figure business owners on LinkedIn, the version of you that lands the deal is almost never the polished, sport-coat-and-fake-bookcase version. It is the real human version. Here is what that actually looks like in my own day, and the test I run on every post before I publish it.
True story.
As I’m typing this sentence, I’m wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt my teenage son gave me a few Christmases ago.
The shirt says, in big block letters across the chest:
World’s Best Farter (I mean Father).
I have not changed out of these pants in about 14 hours. I just got off a Zoom with a 7-figure business owner who has spent the last 20 minutes telling me why he wants to hire my agency. Before that I was on the phone with another one. Before that I had two emails come in from prospects asking how soon we can start.
None of them know I have the worst fashion sense on the planet and dress like a hobo most days.
That’s the joke. But underneath the joke is a real lesson I think more LinkedIn users (especially the ones who have been “polishing” themselves on the platform for years) need to hear.
The People I Wanted Were Hiding From the Person I Was Pretending To Be
For most of my career, I tried to look the part.
Pressed shirt. Sport coat. Headshot taken in front of a fake bookcase. Carefully written bio that used the word “passionate” three times. The whole act.
I figured that’s what serious business owners wanted to see. I figured if I dressed up enough, sounded official enough, smoothed out enough of my actual personality, the right people would finally take me seriously.
What actually happened is the opposite.
Polished John was forgettable. Polished John blended into a feed full of other polished people in front of other fake bookcases using other versions of the word “passionate.” Polished John didn’t make anybody laugh. Didn’t make anybody curious. Didn’t make anybody feel like they already knew me before we got on a call.
Polished John, in other words, was bad for business.
Why “World’s Best Farter” Is Actually a Sales Tool
Here’s what shifted in my career when I stopped performing on LinkedIn and started just being myself.
The 7-figure business owners I now work with are not impressed by my outfit. They are not impressed by my office. They are not impressed by my carefully curated headshot, because most of mine these days are taken on my phone in my kitchen.
They are impressed by exactly two things:
- One, that I clearly know what I’m talking about when it comes to LinkedIn lead generation.
- Two, that I’m a real human being they would actually enjoy spending an hour on Zoom with.
That second one is bigger than people think.
By the time a successful business owner is ready to hire someone like me, they have already met dozens of LinkedIn “experts” who all sound the same. Same buzzwords. Same humble brags. Same vaguely robotic LinkedIn voice. They are sick of it. They want to talk to a person.
When I show up on a Zoom in a goofy t-shirt my kid bought me, it tells the prospect three things instantly:
- I’m comfortable in my own skin. (Which means I’ll be comfortable telling them the truth about their LinkedIn presence, even when it’s not what they want to hear.)
- I have a life and a family. (Which means I’m not desperate for their business.)
- I don’t perform for clients. (Which means I won’t perform once they hire me, either.)
Those three signals do more for closing the deal than any sport coat ever did.
The Test I Use Now Before I Post Anything on LinkedIn
If you are reading this and feeling a little exposed because you, too, have been performing a polished version of yourself on LinkedIn for years, I want to give you a tiny, very specific test you can run on every post you write from here on out.
Before you hit Post, ask yourself one question:
Would I actually say this sentence, in this order, with these words, to a friend at a coffee shop?
If the answer is no, rewrite it.
Real LinkedIn voice and real coffee-shop voice should be almost identical. The minute they diverge, the minute you start writing in “LinkedIn-ese,” your real audience can feel it. They scroll past. The people who don’t scroll past are the people who are also performing, which is not the audience you want.
Showing up as yourself does mean the occasional person will tell you exactly what they think of you. That turns out to be usable. Here is how one furious reply became my best post that month.
Pajama Pants Pay Better Than Sport Coats
I am not telling you to literally take your next sales call in pajama pants. (Although if you do, and it works, please send me the story.)
I am telling you that the version of you that the right clients want to hire is the version of you that talks to your kids over breakfast. The one with inside jokes and goofy t-shirts and a real laugh. Not the LinkedIn-Bot version. Not the polished version. Not the one performing to be taken seriously.
When you finally let that real version of you show up on the platform, two things happen at once.
The wrong-fit prospects (the ones who were never going to pay you what you’re worth anyway) lose interest and leave.
And the right-fit prospects, the ones who run actual businesses and have actual money and actual problems they need solved, lean in. Because they have finally found a real human being on a platform full of bots, brands, and people pretending to be a brand.
That’s the whole game.
Right. The 7-figure business owner is back from his bathroom break. Time to close the deal.
Pajama pants and all.
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