When I decided to fix my own LinkedIn profile, I did what anyone does: I went looking for help.
Two options emerged.
The first treated LinkedIn like a copy-paste exercise. Résumé in, profile out.
The second led with horrific personal trauma in the About section. I still have nightmares.
(At the time, these were my only options. I need you to sit with that for a moment.)
To be fair, the experts are much better today. But a lot of the advice still skips the part that actually matters.
Thirty years of walking into broken situations
So I did what I always do when I can’t find what I need. I started figuring it out.
And it turned out I’d been training for this for thirty years.
Franchises. Nonprofits. Startups. My whole career has been walking into a broken situation, figuring out what’s actually wrong, and building something that works. Same skill set, different sandbox. Worked every time.
LinkedIn profiles were just another broken system nobody had quite cracked yet. So I treated it like a puzzle to solve.
(I love puzzles.)
And it worked. I cracked the damn code.
Then I started helping other people fix their profiles. Hosted masterclasses. Wrote the book. Built a self-paced course that, I’m told, is pretty great.
(pats self on back)
Why most LinkedIn advice skips the strategy
Here’s what I realized somewhere along the way.
The problem was never that people were lazy or clueless about LinkedIn. (They’re not.)
The problem is that almost no one explains the strategy behind a strong profile.
Scratch that.
The problem is that almost no one UNDERSTANDS the strategy behind a strong profile.
The advice tells you what to put where. It rarely tells you why it matters, or how the pieces connect into something that actually works.
And if you can’t see the connections, you can’t build the thing.
That gap is still there. It’s the whole reason Love Your LinkedIn Profile exists.
What’s the difference between LinkedIn tips and a LinkedIn strategy?
Tips tell you to “fill out your About section.” Strategy tells you that your About section is your closing argument, and what happens when you write it like one.
Tips hand you a checklist. Strategy explains why each section earns its place and how they work together to make the right person stop and pay attention.
One leaves you with a tidier profile. The other leaves you with one that works.
You’ve tried the templates, the checklists, the keyword lists. Your profile still isn’t doing anything. It’s not you. The approach was just missing the part that matters.
It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s not like LinkedIn shares the manual about how it’s all connected.
(Which is why I wrote the book.)
Optimize is that part: the same framework I use with my private clients, packaged into a self-paced course with 50+ lessons covering every section of your profile. Not a template. A methodology, with the strategy explained the whole way through.