The 5-Year LinkedIn Bet

In January 2020, I published a post called "LinkedIn: The Place to Be in 2020." It was, more than anything, a public declaration, a way of holding myself accountable to post here more consistently.

At the time, I was leading RevOps at a startup. LinkedIn was, for most people, still "the place you put your resume online," a storage utility you updated when you were job hunting and ignored otherwise.

Here's roughly what I argued back then:

LinkedIn had been around since 2003, originally as a closed network for professionals you already knew. By 2020, it had amassed hundreds of millions of users, but only a fraction were active monthly. As the line between personal and professional blurred everywhere else (at work, online, in how people communicated generally), I thought LinkedIn would inevitably follow.

I remember pushing back hard on the idea that LinkedIn was "just for business content" and shouldn't include anything personal. My argument then was simple: people spend nearly half their waking hours at work with other humans. We show our personalities at the office. Why would we suddenly become faceless on the one platform built around our professional lives?

I also remember addressing the fear a lot of people had, and honestly, still have, about posting more openly: "What if an employer sees something I posted and passes on me because of it?"

My answer then was the same as it is now: if someone decides you're not a culture fit before wasting everyone's time with an interview process, that's not a loss. That's a filter working in your favor.

So, stop lurking, start posting. That was the thesis.

A few months after writing that post, I made good on it. I launched my own brand strategy practice built entirely around the principle that LinkedIn, used consistently, becomes something closer to a "serendipity manifestation engine" than a static resume site.

Five years later, I'm not leading RevOps anymore. I run that personal branding practice full-time. And LinkedIn isn't "becoming" a place for personal-professional content. It's been that for years now, for anyone paying attention.

What strikes me most, looking back, isn't that I was especially prescient. It's that the conviction hasn't really changed at all in five years, just the platform's adoption of an idea that, honestly, felt obvious even back then.

If you're still treating your LinkedIn profile like a static resume in 2026, I'd gently suggest: the "place to be" conversation has been settled for a while now. The only open question is whether you're actually there.

Originally posted on Linkedin. Join the conversation here.

Hi5,

LD 🌶️