E138 | Unlocking LinkedIn: How Al Kushner Turned Connections into a Legacy

 
Welcome to a story that blends grit, strategy, and digital mastery. In this episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show, host Don Williams sits down with Al Kushner—an award-winning author and LinkedIn expert who’s been shaping the platform since its earliest days. If you’re an entrepreneur wondering how to stand out in a crowded digital space, this conversation is your blueprint.

Al Kushner’s journey began in the trenches of cold-calling, long before LinkedIn was a household name. His transition from telephone solicitor to thought leader is a testament to the power of persistence and smart positioning. Today, Al helps professionals optimize their LinkedIn profiles, build meaningful connections, and leverage the platform to dominate their industries. His latest book, The AI LinkedIn Advantage, is a reflection of his deep understanding of how artificial intelligence and personal branding intersect.

But this episode isn’t just about LinkedIn tips—it’s about the mindset behind entrepreneurial success. Al shares how writing his first book was a painful yet transformative experience, and why delegation is the secret weapon for scaling any business. His insights into operating within your “zone of magnificence” offer a refreshing take on productivity and leadership.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your digital presence, this episode delivers actionable advice and inspiring stories. From profile optimization to future LinkedIn trends, Al Kushner reveals how entrepreneurs can turn their online presence into a legacy-building asset.

For information on how to work with Don visit us at https://donwilliamsglobal.com
You can also reach out to Don Williams at https://provenentrepreneurshow.com

Watch the episode here

 

Hey, Don Williams here with today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show. I’ve got a great guest, a real LinkedIn expert, Al Kushner. Al, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thank you, Don. Appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah, thank you. So tell us a little bit about what you do in helping people maximize their experience with LinkedIn.

Well, I help by optimizing their profile and work on strategies for outreach so they can make quality connections and become a dominant force on the platform.

Love that. And so how many people are in LinkedIn today?

last tablet, I think probably over 900 million, but maybe that’s being conservative.

unbelievable.

I’ve been on LinkedIn forever. And I can remember about five or six years ago, I had some friends that were very active on LinkedIn. And they came to me and they said, Hey, you just don’t do enough. And I had about a thousand connections. And so today I’m about 28,000, I think. And the first 10,000 was pretty slow.

The next 10,000 was faster in this last 10,000 because you can only have 30,000 frontline connections. First line is I’m really, really, really picky at this point because I just have limited slots. I don’t know. can’t, yes, yes, but I can’t tell you the number off the top of my head.

You have a lot of followers though? I mean, do you have?

Okay, because

you can have unlimited amount of followers. that’s, that’s a good thing.

Yeah, absolutely. so like, you know, Mark Cuban has 30,000 first line connections, but probably 5 million followers and you can have as many followers. I think. Can you have as many followers as you can get? Okay. There you go. So, I’m not too proud to ask the expert because I, I know a lot, but I don’t know everything. Okay. So, Al tell me, what did you do before?

Yep, as many as you know.

You are an entrepreneur.

Well, I was always an out-of-the-box since I was 21. I got started in the industry working in insurance, if you believe that. I was started as a telephone solicitor. I was actually hired by an agent to help balance phone calls back in the day when it was only using rotary dial. not that back. But when things were different then, no cell phones, no internet. It was just about calling and reaching people. And I had a knack for it.

I got hired by several agents to make calls for them because they’re afraid to get on the phone. And then I decided, hey, I’ll become an agent because I’m good at this stuff. that’s kind of got me started on the way, which was really exciting.

I love that. I think, you know, it’s really hard to, to, for somebody to start out, you know, with a call center application more, you know, business to consumer in the States, almost everybody’s on do not call business to business. So many numbers, you know, are ring to an automated attendant, you don’t get to speak to anybody. And so that really changes it. But you know, my oldest business, my 38 year business, I’m in the contact center business.

And I think some of the best training for human relations was to be on the phone and talk to 50 people a day and figure out how to talk to people today, how to talk to people, how to anticipate and how to act. So, love that. All right, what led you in to LinkedIn expertise? What took you there?

Well, when I think LinkedIn started about 2003, I believe, it was something I jumped on the bandwagon at that time. And it was something that I really enjoyed because it was kind of a platform that was for, you know, serious people. mean, it was business, business, business consumer, and the way people acted on the platform, very professional. And this is what I wanted to be part of. And slowly, surely it came about and eventually was brought up by Microsoft and really

it took off from there. So was very fortunate to be one of the pioneers in the beginning of LinkedIn. So was really exciting.

Yeah, and that was fortunate to get in on the ground floor and kind of ride the elevator up. Okay, so tell me this. What’s a single most unexpected or even maybe painful moment in your entrepreneurial journey that turned out to be a huge advantage later?

Right in my first book, I would say. That was really a challenge. It back in the day, it was probably over 10 or 15 years ago, when they didn’t have what it is nowadays where you can print books by one per book. I had to buy several of these books. And this was really challenging to not only distribution, but from editing and the whole process was really cumbersome. But it’s something that I pushed through because I know that once I do it,

then I’ll basically become a thought leader. And that’s really what excited me about being part of the publishing industry. Because I thought it was only for the big players out there, but real people couldn’t be independent and do that. And I proved them wrong. now this is my newest book, The AI LinkedIn Advantage, is like my 10th book out there. So I was really excited and so much easier nowadays to do things, know, printing books. But back in the day, boy, that was a real challenge. So glad I…

got my licks in at that time so much easier to produce books later.

Yeah, I love that. know, one of the things one of my companies does is we help people write books. I don’t really believe in AI, in using AI to write a book. I think you ought to get thoughts out of your head and heart on the paper. But I’m getting ready to start my 10th. And so when I talk about my first book, I always talk about it as my first and worst book. And it’s generated a lot of business, but it was brutally hard. It was like my brain had a baby. It was messy.

It was painful. I wanted an epidural. They wouldn’t give me one. And I was like, oh, I’m never going to do this again. And like I said, I’m getting ready to start my 10th. And so if you’ve done 10 kudos, that’s quite an accomplishment. And what I tell my clients is this, the root word of authority is author.

And so if you want to be viewed as an authority, if you want to have instant credibility, write a book and do your best to write a good book.

And if you want to go beyond that, become an award-winning author, which I did in my last book.

Yeah,

I love that. Yeah, you want to be an award-winning author, you want to be a best-selling author, and then you want to get on stages because nothing generates leads better than speaking. Okay, most entrepreneurs believe they’re not going to be able to do anything with LinkedIn. Okay, it’s just like Facebook, it’s just like Twitter, it’s just like TikTok. So that’s a myth.

how do you help people get past that metal block of, it’s just another social media platform?

Easy. That’s where your competition is. So if you don’t do it, your competition will. And guess what? You don’t have a choice. And that’s how I show people that if it’s not for you, that’s fine. You know, because not for everyone. Nobody likes, some people don’t like social media. That’s okay. But those who do and embrace it benefit from it and exceed and dominate their industry as a result of it.

Yeah, and I get clients that feel the same way. And I’m like, you know, today you can be your own media channel and you can put out content that would have cost you millions of dollars 20 years ago. And so if you’re in business, I really don’t know how you don’t take advantage of that.

It’s not free. It’ll cost you some money. You’ll spend some time in production and you’ll probably get some teammates to help you. But it still is pennies on the dollar for what it used to be to do radio, television, Yellow Pages, newspaper, all that jazz. Okay. Let’s talk about the dark side. Entrepreneurship to the non-entrepreneur and a lot of our viewers are people that are just becoming entrepreneurs.

It looks really glamorous sometimes from the outside. What’s the hardest part that you think nobody talks about? And then how do you deal with that part?

It’s very simple. The fact is, the hardest part is that you wear many hats as an entrepreneur. And whether you’re a marketer or you’re a content creator, you have to understand that if you don’t delegate, you will die, simply put. And you can’t do it all by yourself. Even producing a book is teamwork and people don’t think of that, you know, and it’s incredible. And same thing as an entrepreneur. If you don’t have your team together, then you’re not going to succeed.

So that’s really the thing to do. You have to allow yourself to delegate at least some of the mundane things and focus on your strengths. And that’s really the way to succeed.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think everybody has zones of incompetence, things they don’t do well at all, things, zones of competence, things they do okay. A zone of excellence, things they do pretty darn good, but also a zone of magnificence, something they do that’s almost magical, it’s where their superpower is. And I think the best entrepreneurs delegate

everything in incompetence, everything in competence and everything in excellence. And they spend their time, effort and energy in their zone of magnificence. And the scary thing about playing in that zone is you could fail and you could be a magnificent fireball and it not go right. But that’s where the good stuff is, is out of your comfort zone in the area where you can absolutely be the best.

Tell me, do you see a future trend for LinkedIn that the average guy, that somebody like me doesn’t see yet?

Future trend? Well, LinkedIn is growing in leaps and bounds. So the fact is, that the platform is growing exponentially. I think they have over 900 million or close to a billion users. I mean, come on. It’s awesome. And Microsoft is behind it. So, you know, they’re always going to be on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the industry. So it’s really the place to be. If you’re a business to business, it’s really…

Man.

the only platform I see that has shown growth in the years that I’ve been with them.

Yeah, I agree. If you’re B2B or B2G, I just don’t know how you don’t, I don’t know how you ignore LinkedIn. You just have to play. So tell me this, what’s a decent strategy? If somebody was just getting on LinkedIn or just going to start being active on LinkedIn, because out of that 900 million, there’s a lot of people that are just kind of sitting on the sidelines. How many times a week should they post? Should they do articles? Should they do videos? Share a little…

I’m

our wisdom with us.

Very simple, before you do any outreach, before you do any postings, work on your profile. Simply put, if you don’t optimize your profile, all your outreach is gonna go nowhere. And people just wanna jump to gun and just get started and do these postings, whatever. Profile needs to be optimized. You need to have a current headshot, hopefully in the past three or six months. You need to have a back billboard that represents who you are. You need to have information about yourself that…

is relevant to whoever you’re going to connect with, this is essential. People seem to ignore that and they sometimes don’t have any profile and they do not reach and they wonder why they’re not getting anything. So that’s the starters.

I think that’s great counsel. You know, it’s very similar to what people do with a web page. They put out a website, kind of like they’re hanging their shingle, like in the old days on Main Street, then they wonder why it doesn’t work. And it’s like, well, it’s like a billboard that nobody’s seen. so at least on LinkedIn, LinkedIn will tell you every week or so how many people are viewing your profile and give you feedback as to how well you’re doing.

Okay, let’s talk about legacy 50 years from now.

What’s one thing you hope people will remember Alkashra?

Well, my books, of course, will live on because that’s what’s great about that is my legacy right there. So hopefully the information that I provide will give value to whoever will be reading at the time. I mean, look at Ben Franklin. I mean, his, what, autobiography was 200 years ago. And still people referring to that, you know, in terms of his genius and how he created all these unique things. He’s amazing. And so I’m hoping that my legacy will live on.

that right.

Yeah,

love that. And so, you know, that’s also the thing about social media is a piece of content really never goes away. And, you know, it’s evergreen and will pay dividends years down the road. So I think you have an offer for our listeners today, Would you share that?

Yeah,

sure. If they go to my website, it’s at linkedvantage.com forward slash audit, they can find a LinkedIn profile optimization checklist that they can get for free. And what’s great about it, I don’t need your email to get it. So even better. So you don’t have to be on any email list. No, you can go directly and get it and start using and applying towards your profile is what I talked about. It’ll help you optimize your profile, make you stand out and give you the ability to go to the next level when you do outreach to be.

considered someone who is trustworthy.

I love that. Share that address again to where everybody catches it. Okay. linkedvanage.com forward slash audit. Okay. Awesome. And Al’s a super nice guy. He doesn’t require your email address, so you can just go download this tool, read the audit and look at your profile.

It’s linkbankage.com and it’s forward slash audit.

and improve your profile today. And then if someone wanted to reach out to you, Al, and potentially engage to work with you with LinkedIn, how would they reach out to you?

Same thing, I go to my website linkvantage.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m there and happy to connect with anyone who wants to work with me. My book is available on the AI LinkedIn advantage. Go ahead and check it out. QR code over there if anyone wants to go ahead and scan in. You can find it available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It’s also available in audiobook format, Spotify and Audible. Check it out.

Good?

Awesome. Check it out. Al, thank you so much for joining me today on The Proving Entrepreneur Show.

Thank

you, Don, and I appreciate it.

You bet. Thanks folks. We’ll see you next time on the Proven Entrepreneur Show. Have a great day. Bye.