Stop raining on LinkedIn. Start winning on it!
Apr 26, 2026
Find Your Superpower newsletter 136
Read time: 5 minutes
Topics covered: LinkedIn strategy, personal branding, Mastermind May 2026 LAST CALL!
I'm writing this newsletter from high in the air.
I'm flying (Singapore Airlines, of course) to Los Angeles to attend a conference, before flying East to Boston to give a keynote talk at Harvard Business School's Connext 2026 conference.
PS: this keynote is life-changing for me as I am the only non-Harvard professor speaking that day!
Join me in celebrating the LinkedIn post that led to the organizers reaching out to invite me to speak.
Earlier this week before my flight, I was interviewed by a journalist from an international newspaper. I'm manifesting hard that the interview will run as it will be a dream come true for me.
In that interview, a topic that came up was why people rain on LinkedIn.
Specifically: why people rain on people who post on LinkedIn.
I can't wrap my head around this as a LinkedIn personal branding coach, because I have shown my clients the step-by-step playbook to unlock more career opportunities, speaking gigs, consulting clients, friends and collaborators on LinkedIn.
It is literally profitable to post on LinkedIn.
So why do people keep raining on LinkedIn?
And I shared with this journalist that I think people rain on LinkedIn for the following reasons:
Reason 1: Raining on LinkedIn is a shield.
When you dismiss LinkedIn as "cringe," you create distance between yourself and the people posting on it. That distance protects you. It gives you an "out." It gives you an excuse not to do the hard work of trying it yourself.
It's the professional equivalent of a kid refusing to try a new food by saying "that looks gross" before they've even tasted it.
The criticism isn't really about other people's content. It's about your own reluctance to take a gamble by putting yourself out there, to risk making mistakes and sounding foolish in front of your industry peers.
And I get it. Posting on LinkedIn can feel terrifying. So it's much easier to sit on the sidelines and rain on the people who had the guts to try.
Reason 2: We make it too easy for people to rain on us.
This one is partly on us as LinkedIn posters. Let's be honest here.
Many LinkedIn users focus on sharing their success: their award, their promotion, their new job. There is even a term coined for it: "humble bragging", AKA "I am humbled and delighted to announce that... <insert success>."
But instead of sharing their successes, what if they shared the story that led to the success?
The challenges. The pain. The anguish. The hardship. The moments they almost quit.
When you lead with the shiny golden trophy, you invite comparison and jealousy. You create a bullseye target on your back for others to throw daggers at you.
But when you lead with the struggle, you invoke a sense of camaraderie, a sense of unity in striving and finally achieving.
People don't connect with your highlight reel. They connect with the part of your journey that mirrors their own.
There is a world of difference between a humble-bragging career update that gets an obligatory, performative "Congrats!" and a post that gets a raw DM saying, "I really needed to hear this today. I don't know how to thank you for this."
Reason 3: They are skeptical that LinkedIn even works.
After coaching thousands of professionals on LinkedIn, I realized that the loudest critics and haters, the people who rain on it the hardest, are almost always LinkedIn lurkers slinking around in the shadows.
They've never been taught how to do it well and have never gotten an outsized ROI from it.
They weren't trained in storytelling. They weren't taught content strategy. Nobody ever showed them how to write a hook, structure a post, or position their expertise in a way that attracts the right audience.
And because they've never learned the craft, they've never experienced "OH-MY-GAWD-ARE-YOU-SERIOUS" professional results.
Of course they're gonna be skeptical and judgmental.
It's easy to rain on something when you've never experienced the career-changing upside of posting on it.
They've never had a potential client slide into their DMs after reading a single post. They've never been approached by an event organizer for a top industry event who found them on LinkedIn. They've never had a headhunter say, "You've been on our radar for months and we've onboarded a new client whom you'd be great for."
In my Mastermind, this is how it plays out. Someone joins feeling super skeptical about what could come out of it, and later raves about their ROI and writes me a testimonial for my Mastermind coaching.
Once you learn the craft and see the results, you stop raining on LinkedIn.
So here's my challenge to you this week.
The next time you sit down to write a LinkedIn post about something you've accomplished, pause.
Don't start with the result. Start with the struggle. The journey.
The days, weeks, months and years of uncertainty and self-doubt.
Share the story, not only the success at the end of the rainbow.
[LAST CALL] MASTERMIND MAY 2026 COHORT 🚨
This is the last call for the May 2026 cohort of my 12-month Brand Builder Mastermind. One seat left!
If you've been thinking about building a brand that attracts high-quality clients, speaking invitations and career opportunities, why not start now? Find out more here.
In our May 2026 intake, we will welcome 10 new Mastermind cadets into our community. Once onboarded, your Mastermind subscription will launch on May 1st.
Instead of raining on LinkedIn, why not start winning on it?
With love,
Juliana your rocketship captain 🚀