How Deep is Your Growth?
The LinkedIn Creators Accelerator just started and it feels just like the first week of business school when everyone’s eager to mingle and jumpstart their projects. It’s easy to get swept away in the wild energy, so I want to pause to reflect on what I hope to achieve from this program.
Major events, by definition, leave lasting impressions on us. These could be career changes, life transitions, or in this case, an intensive accelerator program. How we perceive these events have profound effects on how we grow from them.
I use this 3-layer framework to put things into perspective:
Lvl 1: Outputs & Results
The first layer is the fruit of our labor. This is what society sees and obsesses over: business deals won (or lost), patents, product launches, funding rounds, BIG announcements. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
With LinkedIn, the Outputs are my videos, posts, and articles. The Results are the likes, comments, shares and follows that people give in response to my Outputs.
Outputs and Results are important because they’re our direct impact on the world, which also affects the financial sustainability for our efforts.
However, if I only judged and focused my progress in these terms, I could buy similar results with a 6-week ad campaign. My growth would be tied solely to the program’s duration. Once it’s gone, I’m done.
Lvl 2: Process & People
The next layer is Process. I’ve already changed my content strategy three times from my initial proposal within the program’s first week.
I quickly realized that long form YouTube videos have no place on LinkedIn. YouTube audiences have way more patience because they’re actively searching for the topic, hence the nickname “University of YouTube”.
In contrast, LinkedIn is feed-based. People only stumble upon your post while scrolling through their newsfeed. Their attention spans are much shorter. According to our Accelerator alumni panel, the videos that work best on this platform are 1-2 minutes, making LinkedIn user behavior closer to that of TikTok’s.
Short videos have always been challenging for me because of the nature of my talks (i.e. mind mapping and life lessons) and my desire to produce things of substance. There’s enough stuff out there that scatter our dwindling attention spans.
Yet, I also recognize that to affect change, I need to meet my audience where they are.
So I began experimenting my Process.
After my first upload, a 9-minute mind mapping tutorial (already very short by my standards!), I filmed a quick 1-minute unboxing video of the gift that LinkedIn sent me. I did minimal editing, added some captions and paired it with a compelling text post. The whole thing took about an hour to make.
Guess what? The new video did nearly 2x better than the one that I had spent 15 hours on!
These Results were a clear signal for me to change my Process so that I can produce a different Output. I spent that afternoon breaking down one of my Product Design Mind Map tutorials into five shorter, 1-3 minute segments, and filmed all of them in one go.
This new Process and understanding of the LinkedIn platform will yield far better results over time than a short term growth hack.
Related to Process is People. 1+1 = 1,000 with the right group of folks.
On our kickoff call, it dawned on me just how much talent and drive were gathered in one place. You see, creators are a peculiar bunch of people. It takes a special kind of doctor, scientist, lawyer, VC or entrepreneur to put themselves out on the Internet consistently. You need to really want it more than the typical person in your role.
There are endless ways to collaborate with this group. In just the first week, I’ve been invited to 3 podcasts. My newsfeed is now flooded with cool things my fellow creators are doing, inspiring me to take my own craft to new heights (we'll address healthy inspiration vs toxic FOMO another day).
In other words, People influence Process.
This is why startup founders apply to Y-Combinator and business people go to MBA. Heck, it’s why I made the Mind Map Nation community for multidisciplinary thinkers. Thanks to MMN, I now have 50+ co-creators and growing.
Lvl 3: The Self
Finally we arrive at the deepest layer of growth: Ourselves. My biggest challenge since beginning this creative journey has been my perfectionist nature.
As an artist, I yearn to share what I’ve learned with others. But my deeply ingrained need for polish means it’d take months before I’m ready to make anything public. Sometimes my best insights never see the light of day.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about impulsively rattling off my mouth. But there’s a fine line between prudence and overthinking.
The LinkedIn program is not only encouraging me to grow beyond my stubborn 2-year hold on YouTube-styled content, but also forcing me to film more frequently and overcome my camera shyness. In the words of Maverick in the new Top Gun movie: Don’t think, just do.
After the intense afternoon of making my first five short videos, I can already feel my discomfort with the new Process melting away. A new LinkedIn creator identity is forming as I adapt to the platform and its unique pace.
The self-image and confidence that practice and positive reinforcement brings is by far the program’s most valuable benefit. It bleeds into everything else I do. We’re only beginning to see the Results.
Make the most of your mind maps
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