You don't have to start at the beginning
Here's a permission slip most people never get on LinkedIn:
You don't have to tell a chronological story.
You don't have to start at the start. You don't have to give the setup, the background, the "so a little context first." You can drop your reader straight into the moment that matters and trust them to keep up.
Because honestly? The announcements, the introductions, the team-offsite hype, we don't really care. Sorry. I say that with love.
Context isn't required to begin. What's required is that the very first line gives us a reason to keep reading.
Share something valuable.
Share something entertaining.
Share something that makes us feel.
Readers cherry-pick what moves them and move along. That's not rude — it's how attention works in a feed. We don't need the whole book. We just need the one chapter that's meaningful to us.
This is freeing once it clicks. You've been sitting on stories you thought were "too in the middle" to post, no proper beginning, no tidy ending. Post the middle. The middle is usually where the good part lives anyway.
Think about how the best stories actually grab you. They almost never open with a timeline. They open with a moment. A line of dialogue. A problem already in motion. You get the context as you go, not before you start.
Your LinkedIn posts can work exactly the same way.
Drop us in. Make us feel something. Earn the next line.
(PS: All bets are off if your announcement is that you're going to jail. That one, give us the whole story.)
"I don't want to be another newsletter in your inbox. I want to be an actionletter. In every edition, I'll include a 'Go-and-Do' [below] to help you take an action step TODAY that improves your LinkedIn™ performance, your business, or even your life."
Go and Do:
Take a story you've been meaning to post. Delete the entire first paragraph, the setup, the context, the windup.
Start at the moment something happens. Read it back. It almost certainly got better.
One More Thing - The LinkedIn™ Spark Community
If today's edition resonated, you'd love the room I built for people who want to take this seriously.
The LinkedIn™ Spark Community is for people who want three things most LinkedIn advice doesn't deliver together: education, accountability, and real networking.
Inside, we focus on:
· LinkedIn strategy that actually moves the needle
· How to become a sharper writer (because writing is the work)
· Content systems, not content luck
· Guest speakers, "hot seat" sessions, and presentations from members themselves
You also get one 1:1 call with me per quarter. This is not a group where you post once and disappear. It's a community where people show up, sharpen each other, and build the kind of presence that compounds.