324. Are you the expert Claude recommends? How to stand out in the age of AI

Q4 us here. This is when budgets get signed off and promotions get decided. 

The opportunities won't necessarily go to the smartest or most hard working people in the room.

They will go to the most visible.

This episode is about how to be that person — without making daily LinkedIn content, without a PR agency, and without becoming someone you are not.

Listen to learn:

• How to stand out now that everyone can create content with AI 
• How to be on the list of experts that AI recommends (because people aren't going to Google search to find out anymore)
• The one thing that makes you look credible to both humans and LLMs (it's not your LinkedIn follower count)

This episode is for you if:

• You are a founder, executive or ambitious professional who knows they are good at what they do — but the right people do not know it yet
• You want opportunities to come to you instead of chasing them
• You want to charge more, negotiate better and be taken more seriously — without cold pitching

Free class — next Monday:
Smart, skilled and invisible: how to get seen by the people who decide your career.

Register here: https://www.techfornontechies.co/smart-skilled-and-invisible

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – How visibility earns $500/hour consulting gigs
• 01:21 – Why Q4 is the best time to get noticed
• 02:21 – How content built Sophia's global business
• 03:35 – Client case study: $500/hour from LinkedIn posts
• 06:03 – Free class: how to get seen by decision-makers
• 07:03 – Why AI-generated content hurts your personal brand
• 09:26 – How to stand out from AI slop on LinkedIn
• 10:26 – Getting recommended by ChatGPT and other AI tools
• 11:51 – How to get featured in industry publications

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Transcript:

[00:00] One of my clients works in the automotive industry. He started sharing his views about where the industry is going. Then GLG, one of the major expert networks — the kind corporations pay thousands of dollars to access expert opinion — they called him and offered him five hundred dollars per hour just to pick his brain. This happened because he was visible to the right people for the right things. This episode is about how to do just that.

Welcome to Tech for Non-Techies. This is a podcast for business leaders and non-technical founders building the future in the age of AI. Whether you've been in business for a hundred-plus years and you're looking to modernize, or whether you're building something new, this is the show for you. You'll learn how to come up with new ideas and make them come to life, no matter the size of your organization. I've taught tech and innovation at Oxford University, advise companies like Microsoft, and written for the Harvard Business Review. You're going to hear the frameworks and the thinking that I've built, tested, and taught at the highest level. And now it's your turn. Let's get started.

Hello, smart people. How are you today? The spooky season is upon us — are you ready for Halloween? I don't think I am, but we've got a bit of time.

[01:21] It's also Q4, and this is the time when money decisions get made. This is when promotions get decided, this is when people are signing off budgets. If you've spoken to clients in March, they might be ready to do the deal now. So this is when important decisions for your career, for your business, are getting made. And if you're a bit of a seasoned professional, like yours truly, you already know that the good stuff doesn't always go to the smartest people, or the most hardworking, or frankly the most deserving — it goes to the most visible. Merit is not the only thing that counts.

So I'm going to give you a few examples of what visibility has done for me and my clients, and how I got it. Then we'll go into two things you need to do to be visible in the age of AI, because AI has really changed the game for personal branding and for how to stand out. Okay, let's get started.

[02:21] I've been creating content about non-technical founders for years. First I was writing for Forbes about what non-technical founders need to know about tech, then this podcast started, then I wrote for the Harvard Business Review, and I've gone on lots of podcasts. I've been creating content on other people's platforms, and now on my own, for years. This is literally what really helped me build the company. Let me give you an example of one of my favorite projects: the government of Bahrain found me through that content. They reached out via LinkedIn, interested in the work I was doing with non-technical founders, and I ended up creating two accelerator programs for them — a bigger one and a smaller one — specifically for non-technical founders, focused on AI, no-code tools, and so on. Over a hundred people went through my programs there, and we helped founders save over a million dollars in avoidable mistakes. For me personally, that was a multiple-six-figure contract, and also really interesting work, in a beautiful place with wonderful weather at this time of year. And that didn't come from a cold pitch — they found me because I made myself visible and made sure I was seen as an expert in this field.

[03:35] Here's an example from one of my clients. Yes, I work on the innovation consulting side — non-technical founders, corporate innovation, product thinking, leadership in the age of AI — but I also work with one-on-one clients on helping people get seen, because this is what helped me build my company. Becoming visible to the right people literally led me to create a really interesting global business, and people have been asking me, "How do I do that?" So I have this one-on-one practice, working with smart people to make sure their work gets seen and recognized by people who can make decisions about their career.

One of these one-on-one clients works in the automotive industry. He started posting his genuine views — what he was seeing, where he thought the industry was going — on LinkedIn. GLG called him and asked for his expertise, and paid him 500 dollars an hour. He'd get on one-hour Zoom calls, they'd just pick his brain, and pay him 500 dollars an hour. He literally had to do no preparation for those calls — he just had to show up, and they'd say, "We know you have the expertise we need because we've seen your stuff." That's what visibility does — it makes sure the right people, your target investors, your target clients, your dream recruiters, prestigious government clients, come to you. And you don't necessarily need to be looking for a new job or new clients to benefit — you could just be in the market for making more money doing exactly what you're already doing. And which one of us doesn't want more money for doing exactly the same thing we're doing now? Because if you're seen as an expert in your field, you get to be more appreciated — you can charge more, negotiate better, because people know you can create other options for yourself.

Visibility and personal branding have really changed in the age of AI, and there are now two problems you need to solve if you want to be visible — which you do, if you want a serious career today.

Problem one: creating content has never been easier, because you can get AI to do it — so lots and lots of people are now creating content and putting it on LinkedIn, and I'm sure you've seen it, sadly. Problem two: people now use AI to search for experts, instead of just doing a Google search — which begs the question, are you the person that Claude, or ChatGPT, or Gemini recommends? In this episode, I'm going to help you answer both of those questions, so you end up on the right list and get seen by the right people.

[06:03] For a more in-depth answer on how to stand out in the age of AI so opportunities come to you, come to my next free class — it's on Monday, called "Smart, Skilled and Invisible: How to Get Seen by the People Who Decide Your Career." We're going to cover what top recruiters, executives, and investors do before they sign deals and land top pros — what kind of due diligence they do, what they check before they call you. We're also going to cover the visibility playbook for people who really don't want to be influencers, who don't want to be known for self-promotion — how do you build authority without posting daily? And why this matters even more in the age of AI, because ChatGPT, as I mentioned, already has a shortlist of experts in your field, and you need to be on it. Register for that class — it's free — via the link in the show notes, or go to techfornontechies.co.

[07:03] Now let's talk about problem one. Anybody can create content — lots of people are now creating content using AI and posting it. There's so much AI slop right now that you can even flag it on LinkedIn, and honestly, I can usually tell when something's been written by AI, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. You know when posts start with, "Most people think you should do this, but actually it's that" — that's literally typical AI writing.

So with all this AI slop around, how do you stand out? Through your own opinions. Through creating live, unscripted videos — which can be a bit much if you've never done video before, so maybe start with something easier — write articles, post your own opinions, do it yourself. Yes, you can debate it with AI, but the finished product has to be yours. Here's an easy way to do it: you're reading articles about your industry all the time — maybe the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, industry publications — and you probably have opinions on them. If you're listening to this, you're a smart person, so if you have opinions on what you're reading, post the article and share your opinion. Really easy to do yourself.

Share events you went to and what you learned there — if you're at a conference, just share some snippets, a photo of yourself and people you met, and post it on LinkedIn. Have real experiences, real opinions that belong to you, and share them genuinely. Prioritize quality over quantity — I have a client who's a genuine LinkedIn influencer with over thirty thousand followers, which is a lot on LinkedIn, and he does high-quality posts that are not daily.

[09:26] Something real, written by you, thought about by you, a real experience or opinion shared by you, once a week, is better than daily AI slop — and AI slop is actually going to damage your reputation. If you're thinking, "I have to post something because I haven't posted in a week, I'll just get AI to do it" — you're actually more likely to do something that makes you look worse rather than better. I'm not saying don't use AI at all — use it as a thought partner, don't just let it create stuff for you and leave it at that.

[10:26] Problem two: now that people use AI to search for experts instead of just doing a Google search, are you going to be on that list of experts the AI recommends? Claude and the other LLMs learn from information on the internet — so it's a different thing from normal Google SEO, but not entirely dissimilar. The LLMs still look through websites to make recommendations. So when somebody goes to ChatGPT and says, "Give me the top experts in digital transformation in Chicago," or "Who are the most innovative early-stage startups in health tech in Australia," the model searches the internet and comes up with a list. You want to be on that list, because that list is now the gatekeeper — and here's how to be on it.

You need to get featured on other people's platforms — high-profile press, industry publications, or conferences. This way, the LLM sees you as a credible expert — because yes, posting on LinkedIn is useful, but when you have recognition from other people's platforms, it signals that it's not just that person talking about themselves, they're actually respected by the industry as a whole.

[11:51] Please don't think this is impossible. You don't need to be a professional journalist, or the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, to do this. You don't need a PR department, you don't need a podcast promotion agency — I don't have any of these things, and I've done all of this. I've written for the Financial Times, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review. In my class on Monday, I'm going to share how my client, who runs a law practice in New Jersey, ended up writing for Variety magazine — not once, but several times. And you don't need Forbes, Variety, or Harvard Business Review — you need publications relevant to your industry, and these are actually not that difficult to get into if you have genuinely interesting opinions to share, and if you want to workshop what that pitch is going to look like. This is exactly what I work on with my one-on-one clients, because these are the publications that Google and the LLMs pick up on, and that's what gets you onto that top-expert list — that's what gets you through the AI gatekeepers of today.

I'm seeing this myself, because the LLMs are sending people to me who are asking questions about non-technical founders. Everything I've taught you in this episode is something I'm seeing and using myself.

So if this was useful to you, if this episode really resonated, which I'm assuming it did because you're still listening, then you definitely need to come to my class on Monday. It's free, and it's called "Smart, Skilled and Invisible: How to Get Seen by the People Who Decide Your Career." What do you think is the best window in the year to be seen by the right people? Because this is when money decisions get made. So sign up, and let's make the most of this year.

On that note, have a wonderful day, and I shall be back in your delightful smart ears next week. Ciao.