Jared Kleinert is the Founder/CEO of Offsite. Jared is also a TED speaker, 3x award-winning author, and USA Today’s “Most Connected Millennial” who has helped organize hundreds of events for over 30,000 attendees.
In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Jared Kleinert talks about the pros and cons of remote, hybrid, and office-first work, the impact of AI on offsite planning, LinkedIn marketing tips, and how to help your executive focus on key projects.
CONNECT WITH JARED
- Jared on LinkedIn
- Offsite
- @offsite on X
- Mashable article about time management (featuring a quote from Jared)
- Jared’s book, NETWORKING: How to Meet Influential People, Deepen Relationships, and Become a Super-Connector
ABOUT JARED
Jared Kleinert is the Founder/CEO of Offsite. If you’re planning a team retreat, Offsite can save you time, money, and stress. Jared is also a TED speaker, 3x award-winning author (his most recent book is NETWORKING: How To Meet Influential People, Deepen Relationships, and Become A Super-Connector), and USA Today’s “Most Connected Millennial” who has helped organize hundreds of events for over 30,000 attendees.
As a teenager, Jared was one of the first ten employees at an enterprise SaaS company called 15Five, the market leader for software powering continuous employee feedback, high-performing cultures, objectives (OKR) tracking, etc.
Later, Jared would become a delegate to President Obama’s 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Malaysia, write multiple books including the “#1 Entrepreneurship Book of 2015”, 2 Billion Under 20: How Millennials are Breaking Down Age Barriers and Changing The World (2015), and “Networking: How To Meet Influential People, Deepen Relationships, and Become A Super-Connector” (2022), and speak at TED@IBM the day before he turned 20.
His insights on entrepreneurship, networking, remote work, and offsites have been featured in major media such as Forbes, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, NPR, Entrepreneur, Mashable, Fox Business, The Hustle, Bloomberg, and more.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00.180 –> 00:00:03.220
JEREMY: In-person meeting planning can be a lot to manage.
00:00:03.220 –> 00:00:05.940
JEREMY: That’s where Troop Planner comes in.
00:00:05.940 –> 00:00:10.560
JEREMY: Troop Planner is built to make life easier for busy assistants like you.
00:00:10.560 –> 00:00:19.640
JEREMY: Whether you’re organizing an executive offsite, department meeting, or team retreat, Troop keeps it simple, fast, and organized.
00:00:19.640 –> 00:00:34.480
JEREMY: From choosing the perfect location to managing budgets, coordinating travel, and tracking attendee details, Troop brings everything together in one easy-to-use platform so you can save time and focus on what matters most.
00:00:34.480 –> 00:00:41.140
JEREMY: Troop has an exclusive offer for Leader Assistant listeners through Administrative Professionals Day, so don’t miss out.
00:00:41.140 –> 00:00:44.400
JEREMY: Visit leaderassistant.com/troop to learn more.
00:00:52.068 –> 00:00:59.608
<v SPEAKER_3>The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.
00:01:08.210 –> 00:01:09.590
JEREMY: Hey, friends, it’s Jeremy again.
00:01:09.590 –> 00:01:10.910
JEREMY: Thanks again for listening.
00:01:10.910 –> 00:01:20.410
JEREMY: Just want to let you know, in case you didn’t, that my best-selling book, The Leader Assistant, has a companion study and discussion guide to go along with it.
00:01:20.410 –> 00:01:23.410
JEREMY: It’s called The Leader Assistant Workbook.
00:01:23.410 –> 00:01:36.450
JEREMY: Now, you can buy the Kindle ebook version of The Leader Assistant Workbook on Amazon, or you can go to leaderassistantbook.com and get a printable PDF version of the workbook.
00:01:37.010 –> 00:01:53.070
JEREMY: This version has all the space and margin in between the questions that you can write your own answers and take notes with, so it’s a great way to print it out and keep track of your discussion and study guide notes.
00:01:53.070 –> 00:02:00.590
JEREMY: Again, go to leaderassistantbook.com and click on Workbook to check out The Leader Assistant Workbook.
00:02:00.590 –> 00:02:01.150
JEREMY: Hey, everyone.
00:02:01.150 –> 00:02:02.830
JEREMY: Welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast.
00:02:02.930 –> 00:02:07.210
JEREMY: It’s your host, Jeremy Burrows, and you’re listening to Episode 311.
00:02:08.430 –> 00:02:17.250
JEREMY: Episode 311, you can check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/311, leaderassistant.com/311.
00:02:19.790 –> 00:02:26.930
JEREMY: And today, we’re going to talk a little bit about the impact of AI on offsite planning.
00:02:26.930 –> 00:02:31.830
JEREMY: And we, yeah, I’m excited to bring my friend, Jared Kleinert.
00:02:32.130 –> 00:02:32.570
JEREMY: Is that right?
00:02:32.570 –> 00:02:34.510
JEREMY: Am I saying it right still?
00:02:34.510 –> 00:02:35.270
JEREMY: You got it.
00:02:35.270 –> 00:02:36.870
JEREMY: Good, good.
00:02:36.870 –> 00:02:38.870
JEREMY: So, Jared, welcome back to the show.
00:02:38.930 –> 00:02:41.230
JEREMY: You’re on episode 246.
00:02:41.230 –> 00:02:57.670
JEREMY: So if people want more of a background on Jared and hear us talking about his role as CEO of Offsite and TEDx Speaker or TED Speaker and all those things, you can check out that episode at Leader assistant.com/twofoursix.
00:03:00.850 –> 00:03:06.990
JEREMY: We talked about networking, remote work, offsite planning, which we’ll talk a little about some of that today as well.
00:03:07.270 –> 00:03:10.810
JEREMY: But just so you can check that out to episode two forty six.
00:03:10.810 –> 00:03:16.470
JEREMY: But we are now on three eleven and Jared, anything.
00:03:16.470 –> 00:03:24.550
JEREMY: First thing I want to ask is anything has anything happened since then or how have things changed since then?
00:03:24.550 –> 00:03:28.250
JEREMY: I think that was a man to forty six.
00:03:28.250 –> 00:03:31.510
JEREMY: That would have been time flies, time flies.
00:03:31.510 –> 00:03:36.370
JEREMY: But that would have been in November of twenty twenty three.
00:03:37.370 –> 00:03:44.450
JEREMY: And I know this episode is publishing in twenty twenty five, but we’re recording it in November of twenty twenty four.
00:03:44.450 –> 00:03:46.210
JEREMY: So it’s been a year.
00:03:46.210 –> 00:03:52.470
JEREMY: What’s what’s happened the last year in the world of in your world personally, professionally?
00:03:52.470 –> 00:04:00.010
JARED: Yeah, personally, I moved from New York to Stanford, Connecticut, moved in with my girlfriend, which is amazing.
00:04:00.010 –> 00:04:04.990
JARED: Get to live with not only my girlfriend, but a very cute small white dog named Bodie.
00:04:06.510 –> 00:04:12.150
JARED: And so get to be a dog dad, which is very exciting.
00:04:12.150 –> 00:04:16.350
JARED: And I guess somewhere in that I got my blue belt in jiu-jitsu.
00:04:16.350 –> 00:04:17.730
JARED: It’s been a hobby.
00:04:19.250 –> 00:04:27.050
JARED: And then with Offsite, we’ve basically doubled the business, or we’re expecting to, but we’re recording this, as you said, in November.
00:04:27.050 –> 00:04:31.630
JARED: But we’re on track to double the business from 2023 to 2024.
00:04:31.630 –> 00:04:34.770
JARED: And that means we’ve planned hundreds of off sites all around the world.
00:04:35.090 –> 00:04:42.810
JARED: For a wide range of VC-backed startups, we added some really cool clients this year, including remote.
00:04:42.810 –> 00:04:47.710
JARED: We’re planning two sales kickoffs for them in January.
00:04:47.710 –> 00:04:56.050
JARED: And then we also signed what became our largest client this year called Guild, which some of your audience members may know about.
00:04:56.110 –> 00:04:58.810
JARED: It’s sort of like an upscaling platform.
00:04:58.810 –> 00:05:04.950
JARED: But we’ve planned six offsites for them already at time of recording.
00:05:04.950 –> 00:05:11.270
JARED: And then we signed a contract with them in October to do a thousand person all hands meeting next year.
00:05:11.270 –> 00:05:19.130
JARED: And so that is almost four times the size of our previous largest offsite, which is very exciting.
00:05:20.250 –> 00:05:23.070
JARED: So excited to see how the business has grown.
00:05:23.970 –> 00:05:31.910
JARED: Product, we’ve gone from having a marketplace where you can book your venue for an offsite to going multi-vendor.
00:05:31.910 –> 00:05:48.170
JARED: So now you can use our marketplace to book not only your room block, meeting space, things like that, but also book your speakers, facilitators, swag providers, photographers, videographers, kind of any vendor you might need for a team retreat or offsite.
00:05:48.170 –> 00:05:57.930
JARED: So that’s also very exciting as we sort of try and become the Airbnb for team retreats or thumbtack for team retreats.
00:05:57.930 –> 00:05:59.990
JARED: Yeah, it’s been fun.
00:05:59.990 –> 00:06:00.350
JEREMY: Nice.
00:06:00.350 –> 00:06:00.770
JEREMY: Nice.
00:06:00.770 –> 00:06:05.930
JEREMY: And so is it still, are you still working with a lot of assistants?
00:06:05.930 –> 00:06:17.510
JEREMY: Like are those your primary people that you’re working with or is it a 50-50 combo between assistants and maybe event planners or office managers?
00:06:17.650 –> 00:06:23.790
JEREMY: Yeah, who are primarily setting these offsites up?
00:06:23.790 –> 00:06:27.250
JARED: Yeah, we’re still working with mostly like small and medium businesses.
00:06:28.470 –> 00:06:36.110
JARED: Sweet Spot right now is 100 to 2,500 employee companies, but we are working with smaller companies and then occasionally working with enterprise.
00:06:36.110 –> 00:06:48.190
JARED: But with SMBs, you’re still looking at an executive assistant, a chief of staff, a head of people that despite having 17 other jobs gets asked to plan these offsites.
00:06:48.190 –> 00:06:55.350
JARED: We’re still very much building for the leader assistant in mind and the chief of staff in mind.
00:06:55.350 –> 00:07:04.270
JARED: In the future, it might be more event planners, but I think an offsite is something beyond just an event.
00:07:04.270 –> 00:07:09.090
JARED: It’s not really like the same as a marketing event or conference.
00:07:09.530 –> 00:07:22.610
JARED: It’s really a strategic gathering of your team for quarterly or annual planning, for learning and development, for kicking off your go-to-market motion, all that sort of stuff.
00:07:22.690 –> 00:07:35.250
JARED: So then it requires bringing in executives, it requires bringing in their right-hand man or woman or person to assist them in making sure it’s high value.
00:07:35.250 –> 00:07:40.150
JARED: That’s where an assistant, a chief of staff, other people leaders would come in to play.
00:07:40.150 –> 00:07:41.050
JEREMY: Gotcha.
00:07:41.050 –> 00:07:43.050
JEREMY: Cool.
00:07:43.050 –> 00:07:51.590
JEREMY: Tell us a little bit about the remote, hybrid, you know, office-first work environments.
00:07:51.590 –> 00:08:08.310
JEREMY: I know since we last spoke, there’s, it seems like it’s kind of a roller coaster of the corporate world of like, oh, there was COVID, so we were like, global pandemic, everybody’s remote, but then kind of slowly coming back into the office.
00:08:08.310 –> 00:08:13.670
JEREMY: But like, well, hybrid or, oh, you got to come in one day a week, or you got to come in three days a week now.
00:08:13.670 –> 00:08:22.250
JEREMY: And now there’s some companies lately that have been like, oh no, we’re going full on, five days a week in office, you know, deal with it.
00:08:23.210 –> 00:08:29.770
JEREMY: So, yeah, so what’s been your experience and what are you seeing in the market?
00:08:29.770 –> 00:08:34.950
JEREMY: And then what kind of pros and cons are you seeing of those different arrangements?
00:08:35.990 –> 00:08:36.830
JARED: Sure.
00:08:36.970 –> 00:08:50.270
JARED: One thing I forgot to mention is since the last episode that we were on, I started posting regularly on LinkedIn and then have had over 11 million impressions on posts this year.
00:08:50.270 –> 00:08:54.850
JARED: And so by the end of the year, by the time you hear this, that might be 12, 13 million for the year.
00:08:54.850 –> 00:08:59.490
JARED: And it’s like, could be hundreds of thousands of dollars of earned media value for the company.
00:09:01.190 –> 00:09:04.430
JARED: But that’s also just meant that I’ve been talking about remote work a lot.
00:09:04.430 –> 00:09:10.350
JARED: That’s generally what I’ve posted about and paying more attention than maybe I was before.
00:09:11.450 –> 00:09:22.210
JARED: And so I think what’s happening is sort of like the economy, or the economy does not match the stock market, if you will.
00:09:22.210 –> 00:09:33.710
JARED: And so most people would feel like the economy is pretty tight and that consumer spending, is challenged and like your money is not going as far as it used to.
00:09:33.710 –> 00:09:35.710
JARED: And there’s a lot of people that aren’t getting by.
00:09:35.710 –> 00:09:48.050
JARED: And yet the stock markets, at least in November, were at an all time high and probably will be again by February, if I had to guess, even not if it’ll be pretty close and probably pretty healthy.
00:09:48.050 –> 00:09:51.830
JARED: And so it’s this K shaped economy, if you will.
00:09:51.830 –> 00:09:57.230
JARED: And I think that’s also happening with remote work versus office first work.
00:09:57.770 –> 00:10:05.210
JARED: You know, you generally have this macro trend where a majority of companies are going remote, are going hybrid.
00:10:05.210 –> 00:10:26.330
JARED: But you do have a very small percentage of very important companies like Amazon, like Apple, like Starbucks, that made a bunch of headlines about trying to go more in office, whether it was five days a week or start to get to like three days a week and putting these return to office plans in motion.
00:10:26.990 –> 00:10:36.070
JARED: And so I personally think it’ll still be remote and hybrid in the future as a majority of what the workforce wants.
00:10:36.070 –> 00:10:45.370
JARED: I read a stat the other day that like 80% of companies are hybrid or remote, and yet 98% of the workforce wants to be.
00:10:45.370 –> 00:10:50.530
JARED: And so I just don’t see us closing Pandora’s box again.
00:10:50.630 –> 00:10:58.010
JARED: I do think the pandemic really just opened up the floodgates in terms of the push to remote-first work.
00:10:58.010 –> 00:11:21.350
JARED: And if you look out 10 years from now, I just don’t see a world where we’re all going to be in an office with all the advances of technology that we’re going to have with how the workforce may change and go to a more fractional state or more towards like solo-preneurship and more people leveraging AI for their work.
00:11:21.450 –> 00:11:27.350
JARED: I just don’t know how that matches up with an office-first future personally.
00:11:27.350 –> 00:11:28.030
JEREMY: Yeah, yeah.
00:11:28.150 –> 00:11:28.790
JEREMY: I agree.
00:11:28.790 –> 00:11:29.350
JEREMY: I agree.
00:11:29.550 –> 00:11:31.930
JEREMY: What about, speaking of AI?
00:11:31.930 –> 00:11:44.690
JEREMY: How has AI, I mean, in its advancing so fast every week or two, there’s new updates to the algorithms on ChatGPT or Google Gemini or OpenAR or whatever.
00:11:44.690 –> 00:11:48.350
JEREMY: And it’s like, it’s just amazing how quickly it’s evolving.
00:11:48.350 –> 00:12:00.390
JEREMY: Even things like the Tesla did their AI event or their showcase on autonomous, you know, cyber cab or whatever they’re calling it.
00:12:00.390 –> 00:12:08.850
JEREMY: And where it’s like driving people around without any steering wheel and, you know, without any pedals or whatever.
00:12:08.850 –> 00:12:17.090
JEREMY: And then they’ve got the Optimus robot and it’s got it’s gotten way more advanced since the last time they showed it off.
00:12:17.090 –> 00:12:24.470
JEREMY: So, but not obviously not just in the hardware, cars and robots world, but also obviously in software.
00:12:24.470 –> 00:12:39.170
JEREMY: So how have how has the offsite world and these assistants trying to plan and execute an offsite for 50 people, 100 people, 1000 people?
00:12:39.170 –> 00:12:43.370
JEREMY: How has AI directly impacted that whole process?
00:12:45.170 –> 00:12:49.150
JARED: Not too much yet, and I’m grateful for that.
00:12:49.810 –> 00:13:02.350
JARED: I do think AI can be helpful for travel planning, and it’s easiest at the individual level, and then it gets harder and harder if you’re doing group travel planning.
00:13:02.350 –> 00:13:15.270
JARED: But right now, the Chat2BT and Expedia, I believe, or Kayak, or maybe both have partnerships and have developed GPTs for you to plan your own personal itinerary.
00:13:15.270 –> 00:13:21.090
JARED: So you might want to know that for planning executive travel or your own personal travel.
00:13:21.090 –> 00:13:36.410
JARED: We are testing various uses of AI for group travel, for our clients, and at some point, if we have that become good enough, then we would probably give that away as a free tool.
00:13:36.410 –> 00:13:39.350
JARED: So hopefully, that’s out by the time this comes out.
00:13:39.350 –> 00:13:45.490
JARED: I don’t want to promise that, depending on our product, probably later next year.
00:13:46.890 –> 00:14:01.030
JARED: Then we do have an AI feature for reviews, where in our marketplace, it looks like Airbnb, so the more people plan off-sites, the more that they’re putting reviews on the marketplace.
00:14:01.030 –> 00:14:08.270
JARED: But we do have some vendors and some properties where we haven’t had anyone go yet, despite them being in our marketplace.
00:14:08.270 –> 00:14:33.830
JARED: We’ve used AI to pull Google reviews, but specifically ones from groups that have traveled there, because that’s a different experience than a personal traveler might have, and then have summarized those, so it is one cohesive review, as if a chief of staff or an EA wrote it, as opposed to a whole scroll of various group reviews.
00:14:34.330 –> 00:14:37.310
JARED: We’ve started playing around with AI ourselves.
00:14:39.390 –> 00:14:45.530
JARED: I do think it’ll help with various parts of planning and offsite, whether it’s travel seems very obvious.
00:14:45.530 –> 00:14:50.530
JARED: You could use it for agenda creation, potentially.
00:14:51.390 –> 00:15:04.890
JARED: You can use it for budgeting, perhaps, and try and teach AI to pull information from various hotel proposals and various vendor proposals, and then push that into a spreadsheet that you’ve created to plan your offsite.
00:15:06.430 –> 00:15:28.190
JARED: You could probably use it for agenda creation and scanning all the best practices online and prompting it to add your companies OKRs, and then add feedback from a pre-offsite feedback form on what attendees of the offsite want to learn and have that keep developing the agenda.
00:15:28.190 –> 00:15:31.190
JARED: But I don’t think it’s going to be perfect right away.
00:15:31.410 –> 00:15:32.050
JARED: Hopefully, it’s not.
00:15:32.050 –> 00:15:35.490
JARED: Otherwise, maybe we won’t be in business for that much longer.
00:15:35.570 –> 00:15:37.650
JEREMY: Right, right.
00:15:37.650 –> 00:15:38.090
JEREMY: Awesome.
00:15:38.090 –> 00:15:40.610
JEREMY: So how…
00:15:40.610 –> 00:15:43.830
JEREMY: I want to ask you actually a couple of quick questions.
00:15:43.850 –> 00:16:00.970
JEREMY: One was, you know, how can assistants help their executive or executives if they support more than one, you know, focus on key projects and be more effective?
00:16:01.150 –> 00:16:20.890
JEREMY: In other words, like, you know, there’s all these little emergencies that come up, these little fires that kind of pop up week in and week out, and, you know, we don’t want our executive to get distracted by every little thing that kind of pops up and want them to stay focused.
00:16:20.890 –> 00:16:35.150
JEREMY: So how have you seen, and whether it’s related to, you know, just handling offsite logistics so your executive can just show up and do that, or what or other topics, it doesn’t just have to be in the offsite world.
00:16:35.150 –> 00:16:40.670
JEREMY: But, yeah, how have you seen assistants do this well?
00:16:41.750 –> 00:16:48.190
JARED: Yeah, I was just interviewed or included in a Mashable article about time management.
00:16:48.190 –> 00:16:50.670
JARED: I gave it to you if you want to put in the show notes.
00:16:50.670 –> 00:16:52.550
JEREMY: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:16:52.550 –> 00:17:09.990
JARED: But I do think, at least for me, what I’ve tried to get better and better at is prioritizing the most important thing for a week, for a month, a quarter, a year, could even be the day, and then de-prioritizing everything else.
00:17:10.230 –> 00:17:17.130
JARED: So as a founder, as a CEO, I’m personally willing to let small fires burn.
00:17:18.670 –> 00:17:21.430
JARED: Probably not the best thing from an organizational standpoint.
00:17:21.550 –> 00:17:24.950
JARED: So currently, I don’t have an EA.
00:17:24.950 –> 00:17:41.910
JARED: But if I did, my hope of that EA would be to extinguish those small fires or prevent those small fires from happening while I’m focusing on the big thing, and then to not distract me while I’m focusing on the big thing.
00:17:42.390 –> 00:17:54.450
JARED: I do have team members here and there that are very ambitious and very entrepreneurial, but then sometimes are attempting to distract me from that important thing.
00:17:54.450 –> 00:17:55.650
JARED: Right now, it’s a fine, great thing.
00:17:57.610 –> 00:18:06.490
JARED: Hopefully, we’ve finished fundraising by the time you listen to this, and we’re focused on Series A in the future and building a category-defining company.
00:18:06.490 –> 00:18:12.690
JARED: But at time of recording, I’m fundraising, and I’m spending basically half my working hours doing that.
00:18:12.690 –> 00:18:22.310
JARED: That’s the only thing that matters because if I can get that done, then we have all the capital we want to achieve our goals throughout next year.
00:18:22.930 –> 00:18:25.370
JARED: And we’re already break even.
00:18:25.370 –> 00:18:32.190
JARED: So theoretically, this may be the last round we ever need to raise if we want to go the profitable and growing route.
00:18:32.190 –> 00:18:33.030
JARED: So that’s pretty important.
00:18:33.030 –> 00:18:35.450
JARED: The upside is very high on that.
00:18:35.450 –> 00:18:41.910
JARED: And so I’m willing to let some of my marketing priorities go to the wayside.
00:18:41.910 –> 00:18:50.250
JARED: I’m willing to let some side projects falter, like even some hobbies like Jiu-Jitsu, I’m just not going to get too much of.
00:18:51.450 –> 00:19:18.110
JARED: And so I think it’s important for any assistant to either be aware of that sort of thing, if your principal also believes in what I’m sharing, and then be there to prevent those small fires from happening, to extinguish them if they happen, and then to sort of have addition by subtracting.
00:19:19.330 –> 00:19:39.270
JARED: You can also be the one to help your principal like figure out what that priority is, and sort of guide them and your executive or multiple executives on what is the most important thing for you to work on, and like what could you do now that if you were to accomplish, would render everything else useless or less important.
00:19:39.270 –> 00:19:46.830
JARED: And so that’s going to be different for every executive, and it’s going to be different by the day, month, week, quarter, year, perhaps.
00:19:48.450 –> 00:19:53.770
JARED: But it’s a skill that I’ve developed in the last few years, and getting better and better at.
00:19:53.770 –> 00:20:01.710
JARED: And I think it’s really important in a world where it’s just increasingly noisy, the opportunities are endless.
00:20:01.710 –> 00:20:07.930
JARED: You can always tinker with a new AI tool or go find some entertainment online.
00:20:08.150 –> 00:20:15.310
JARED: You just got to set a strategy and then execute it and do nothing else.
00:20:15.310 –> 00:20:18.010
JARED: That you do have to have good strategy.
00:20:18.030 –> 00:20:22.950
JARED: You also have to have really good execution, and that’s going to come from just ruthless prioritization.
00:20:24.230 –> 00:20:25.750
JEREMY: Nice.
00:20:25.750 –> 00:20:25.950
JEREMY: Yeah.
00:20:25.950 –> 00:20:28.010
JEREMY: Thanks for sharing good tips.
00:20:28.150 –> 00:20:30.950
JARED: Do you agree with me or you?
00:20:31.970 –> 00:20:32.210
JEREMY: Yeah.
00:20:32.210 –> 00:20:34.070
JEREMY: I think so.
00:20:34.070 –> 00:20:35.390
JEREMY: 100 percent agree.
00:20:35.390 –> 00:20:47.790
JEREMY: And I think that there’s a lot of times where you just have to let things go or convince your executive to let things go because they’re minor at the time.
00:20:47.790 –> 00:20:56.710
JEREMY: And the things that are major in that moment, you just got to put all your energy into it.
00:20:56.910 –> 00:20:59.670
JEREMY: And so, we’re in a similar boat, we’re raising capital.
00:20:59.670 –> 00:21:05.350
JEREMY: And so, the majority of my time even is managing that process right now.
00:21:05.350 –> 00:21:13.690
JEREMY: And so, there are a lot of things that I could be doing that are not related to that, but right now, they’re not important.
00:21:13.690 –> 00:21:15.870
JEREMY: So, totally agree.
00:21:15.870 –> 00:21:16.150
JARED: Okay.
00:21:16.150 –> 00:21:26.650
JEREMY: Last thing I want to ask you about, you mentioned your LinkedIn marketing or LinkedIn influence, LinkedIn traction that you’ve gotten.
00:21:28.130 –> 00:21:43.270
JEREMY: What are maybe the top two things that you’ve done that you’ve seen make a direct impact on, whether it’s the number of engagements you’re getting, the number of impressions, the number of followers, all the above.
00:21:43.270 –> 00:21:45.270
JEREMY: What has been those things?
00:21:45.270 –> 00:22:01.350
JEREMY: So, if assistants listening are like, you know what, I’m trying to grow my LinkedIn network, I’m trying to grow my reach, maybe I’m trying to grow my personal brand on LinkedIn, what are the top two tips that you would say, maybe even action items for us to take away and try out on LinkedIn?
00:22:02.470 –> 00:22:05.890
JARED: Yeah, I would be really clear on what your goals are for LinkedIn.
00:22:05.890 –> 00:22:13.130
JARED: So, my goal is not really to build a personal brand even.
00:22:13.130 –> 00:22:18.150
JARED: My goal is to ultimately generate pipeline and revenue for Offsite.
00:22:19.250 –> 00:22:27.550
JARED: So, I’ve approached it differently than if I was trying to build a personal brand and an e-mail newsletter and stuff around that.
00:22:27.550 –> 00:22:42.590
JARED: That’s probably different than an assistant listening to this who maybe would run things differently to get a better job or to increase their value to their employer and get a promotion.
00:22:42.590 –> 00:22:45.530
JARED: So, I’d be clear on what your goals are first.
00:22:47.270 –> 00:23:25.590
JARED: If you’re listening to this and you have a similar goal for me, as me, where you’re using LinkedIn to generate business, maybe for your employer, or you’re working with your executives to build their followings online, then what’s worked for me is, I guess, one is I’ve treated LinkedIn like a big science experiment and I’ve been very unromantic about what posts would work and what messaging would work, or even how I’ve written certain posts would work.
00:23:26.010 –> 00:23:41.810
JARED: I’ve tested out a bunch of stuff, continue to do so, and if something is resonating, then I just keep posting about it and remixing that topic and say it in 10 different ways over the next few weeks.
00:23:43.190 –> 00:23:56.490
JARED: I almost think it’s a little bit cringe at this point in my posts, but every time I post, I’m getting 10,000 to 20,000 impressions on a bad post, and then my good posts can be upwards of 100,000 impressions.
00:23:57.730 –> 00:24:01.350
JARED: Who am I to say that something’s not working?
00:24:02.910 –> 00:24:10.610
JARED: The platform is telling me what is resonating with people, and the comments, and so forth.
00:24:10.610 –> 00:24:22.630
JARED: That’s one thing is just being scientific about it, and forgoing your ego around what you think will work, and not being so romantic about it, if you have the same goals as I do.
00:24:24.050 –> 00:24:27.930
JARED: The second is looking for viral templates.
00:24:30.130 –> 00:24:34.890
JARED: Kind of like the great artist steel concept.
00:24:34.890 –> 00:24:52.990
JARED: I don’t plagiarize anyone, but I do look online a lot for other posts that are going viral, and then I try and remix them with my own wording, or with my own topics, and that works pretty well.
00:24:54.890 –> 00:25:03.990
JARED: Because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you can just find what’s working and going viral already, and then try and make it your own.
00:25:03.990 –> 00:25:10.230
JARED: And the same artists do this, musicians do this, people do this in business.
00:25:10.230 –> 00:25:11.830
JARED: You can do it in content creation as well.
00:25:11.830 –> 00:25:19.950
JARED: I’m sure you see dozens of the same types of TikTok or Instagram posts, and so it works on LinkedIn too.
00:25:22.030 –> 00:25:33.970
JARED: And maybe like a bonus tip, if you ask for two, I’ll give you three, is to write content that makes someone else look smart when they share it.
00:25:33.970 –> 00:25:44.450
JARED: And so one of the best ways to go viral is to get reposts on your content, kind of like a retweet on Twitter slash X.
00:25:45.570 –> 00:25:54.190
JARED: And so for someone to repost your content, it has to be so good that they kind of stop scrolling, they read, they click see more.
00:25:54.190 –> 00:25:56.170
JARED: And then they’re like, you know what?
00:25:56.170 –> 00:25:59.150
JARED: I think other people in my network would benefit from this.
00:25:59.150 –> 00:26:05.090
JARED: And then they repost and either just repost as is, or they might add their own copy to it.
00:26:05.090 –> 00:26:14.750
JARED: And so most of my posts have been without any photos of me or anything that’s like promoting me necessarily.
00:26:14.750 –> 00:26:17.030
JARED: And like maybe I promote Offsite at the end.
00:26:18.530 –> 00:26:35.390
JARED: But I write most of my content around remote work ideas or like kind of news jack, any sort of like return to office things, and just put something out there that someone else may want to share.
00:26:35.390 –> 00:26:43.710
JARED: And I think if you keep that in mind, and you’re looking for viral templates, you will have a better shot of writing more viral posts than if you weren’t doing those things.
00:26:44.350 –> 00:26:45.810
JEREMY: Yeah.
00:26:45.810 –> 00:26:52.770
JEREMY: Is there any sort of last question on this is, is there any sort of like cadence or rhythm that you found is successful?
00:26:52.770 –> 00:26:59.210
JEREMY: Like, oh, I got to I’m going to post once a day or I’m going to post three times a week, anything like that?
00:27:00.250 –> 00:27:04.910
JARED: I personally post every day, even on the weekends, typically.
00:27:04.910 –> 00:27:13.590
JARED: And then I try and post between like 8.45 and 9:45 AM Eastern.
00:27:14.690 –> 00:27:19.490
JARED: I don’t know if that’s the best time to do it, but that’s just what’s worked for me.
00:27:19.490 –> 00:27:29.470
JARED: Maybe I should try 11 to 12 AM Eastern because then I’ll catch people waking up in California and also people in the East Coast.
00:27:29.470 –> 00:27:31.950
JARED: So I probably could be better about experimenting with it more.
00:27:32.830 –> 00:27:36.350
JARED: But that’s just been the cadence that I’ve picked up.
00:27:36.350 –> 00:27:37.810
JARED: Sometimes I’ll get even crazier.
00:27:37.810 –> 00:27:48.030
JARED: And if something isn’t working in the morning, like typically if it’s not getting to a certain impression count within 30 minutes, I know it’s not going to work.
00:27:48.030 –> 00:27:54.050
JARED: And then, or even like an hour, I might delete that post and then write another one later.
00:27:54.050 –> 00:27:56.130
JARED: And so I’ll do that.
00:27:56.130 –> 00:27:58.450
JARED: And then I also just like memes.
00:27:58.450 –> 00:27:59.730
JARED: And so I’ve been playing around with memes.
00:28:00.190 –> 00:28:22.110
JARED: There’s a Jason Levine, L-E-V-I-N, that has like a meme alert template thing, where it’s like seven bucks a month and I get like five or six memes a day that I could repurpose for remote work or Offsite planning or whatever.
00:28:22.110 –> 00:28:28.790
JARED: And so he sends that out largely for posting memes on Twitter, but occasionally I test one on LinkedIn just for fun.
00:28:28.990 –> 00:28:30.930
JARED: And then sometimes it resonates as well.
00:28:30.930 –> 00:28:32.130
JARED: Nice.
00:28:32.130 –> 00:28:38.210
JARED: Who’s not going to want to repost a good Taylor Swift meme when you see one?
00:28:38.210 –> 00:28:38.610
JEREMY: Right.
00:28:38.610 –> 00:28:39.850
JEREMY: Totally.
00:28:39.850 –> 00:28:40.130
<v SPEAKER_3>Cool.
00:28:40.130 –> 00:28:41.150
JEREMY: Well, thanks, Jared.
00:28:41.150 –> 00:28:43.870
JEREMY: Appreciate your time again.
00:28:43.870 –> 00:28:50.250
JEREMY: Everyone listening, definitely go connect with Jared and learn about offsiteleaderassistant.com/311.
00:28:52.190 –> 00:28:57.470
JEREMY: I’ll put all those links in there, including the time management article that he mentioned.
00:28:57.470 –> 00:29:00.370
JEREMY: And yeah, we’ll we’ll definitely keep in touch.
00:29:00.370 –> 00:29:04.490
JEREMY: And thanks for thanks again for being on the show.
00:29:04.490 –> 00:29:04.770
JARED: Yeah.
00:29:04.770 –> 00:29:05.290
JARED: Thanks for having me.
00:29:16.058 –> 00:29:18.758
JARED: Please review on Apple Podcasts.
00:29:25.170 –> 00:29:26.870
<v SPEAKER_3> goburrows.com.
