Jesse Futia

Fin Ghost

Helping Real Estate Professionals build $1M brands on LinkedIn.

Co-Founder and Ghostwriter

Executive Equity Investing 

Helping busy professionals build generational wealth and retire comfortably through passively investing in real estate.

Chief Executive Officer

Wealth Science Podcast 

Interviewing the top real estate and financial experts in the World.

Host

Writer and Co-Founder @ CRE Digital | Copywriting & social media management for the world's most innovative real estate companies

Creating content on social media is digital leverage for real estate professionals. 

𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲. 

You now have two choices:

1. Create content

2. Be passed by those that do 

My story 👇

Broke college kid turned 7-figure real estate investor and writer. 

I help 7-figure real estate professionals grow their brands and drive qualified leads on LinkedIn. 

--

Hit the 🔔 and follow along each day for free tips.

Ready to grow your brand on LinkedIn to drive more qualified leads?

𝗛𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲.

Grow your LinkedIn & business without wasting hours a day on content · Helped 100+ business owners build their personal brands · Ghostwriter for founders scaling to 7 & 8 figures

My life changed the day I got the call...

Until September 2022, I thought I’d made it.

I got into Bioengineering at one of Portugal’s top universities.

All the years of late nights and hard work finally paid off.

But one day, the phone rang.

It was our landlord.

His voice was cold and final: “I want you out as soon as our contract ends.”

With no money and the new sky-high rents, I was left in a pit of anxiety.

With little savings and skyrocketing rents, my mother and I were soon going to be homeless.

My grades, once a source of pride, began to plummet.

Anxiety and despair took hold.

I was on the verge of depression.

Faced with no other choice, I took the biggest bet of my life...

I was going to go all in on learning how to make money online.

I didn't want the Lambo or fancy Rolex.

I just wanted to make money so my mother and I could survive.

So, with 0 idea what I was doing, I decided to hire a business mentor I had been following on social media for a little over a year.

I was going to build my personal brand and learn how to get paid to write online as a ghostwriter.

I knew the next few months would determine whether:

1) My mother and I would have a roof over our head 

Or...

2) My mother and I would be begging in the streets just to get by.

So, I went 100% in.

• I quit college
• I drained my savings
• I even took out a loan so I could afford the mentorship

Starting from 0, I faced many challenges...

• Months of no income
• Feeling like I didn’t belong
• Wondering if I’d even make it

But through many failures (and lessons), I slowly got better each day.

I went from 0 followers to growing by over 30 followers a day.

I went from being a nobody to talking with high-value entrepreneurs daily.

But most importantly, I started making enough money to pay for rent and put food on our table.

Nickolas Carlos Grothe

If I were a founder trying to grow my audience on LinkedIn, here’s the 1 thing I WOULDN'T do: 

Write with AI.

Sounds ironic coming from a social media ghostwriter who uses it daily, but hear me out.

ChatGPT wasn't very advanced when I began creating content. 

I had prompts, but their results were mediocre, so I learned to ideate, write, and edit all my clients' content manually.

Was it slow? Yeah.

But it taught me how to think like a content marketer and, more uniquely, what great writing feels like.

Your brain starts picking up on small nuances:

• What a good idea looks like
• Which emotions resonate with your audience
• How switching two words can radically change your entire post

If you use AI too early, you'll never develop these nuances.

But if you're serious about building authority online...

Write your first 50 posts yourself.

Don’t worry if they're bad. 

You’re training your brain to understand good content.

Then, use AI to refine your ideas, find new angles, and analyse resources like client calls and market data.

Solidify your foundations before you amplify them with AI.

I write content with ChatGPT daily.
Sometimes I write content manually.
The other day, I did it with a pen in my notebook.

The reason we're seeing so much bland content on LinkedIn is that "creators" are outsourcing their thinking to AI.

It happened to me a few months ago.

1) I'd ask ChatGPT questions
2) It would give me some options
3) I'd tell it to choose the best

This is dangerous because it eliminates two of the only things that make you unique:

Your thinking and real-world experiences.

My posts became bland, and even worse, I found myself without any opinions and views about, well, anything.

Here's what I've been doing instead:

1) Ask AI questions about your content
2) Study the different options and angles
3) Prompt, analyse, write, and re-prompt until you have a finished piece you're satisfied with

It's led to better results for both my clients and me.

Let AI be your co-writer.
Not your full-time thinker.

My post last week went viral for my audience size.

- 16,000 members reached
- 85 profile views
- 97 followers since it went out
- 26 reposts
- 24,000 impressions
- 19 saves
- 6 sends on LinkedIn

And it's still climbing.

It's led to several connections and conversations with founders and decision-makers inside my ideal clients' companies.

Going viral is only useful if...

1) It's within your industry
2) You have a funnel to turn it into opportunities

You don't need to go viral to be successful on LinkedIn.

But make sure that when you do, it's monetizable.

P.S.

I've opened up a slot for my DFY ghostwriting services. 

Current and past clients include real estate investors, financial liquidity providers, ecom coaches, and boutique marketing agencies.

If you want to build your LinkedIn personal brand and attract your ideal clients...

DM me "GROWTH" to see how I can help.

I'm 23. Danish/Portuguese. I run a one-man ghostwriting business. In the past 2 years, I've:

- Helped grow major real estate, finance, and e-commerce brands on LinkedIn

- Worked 1:1 with the top 1% entrepreneurs in personal branding

- Coached a community with 100+ members on growing their LinkedIn audience

All because of one main thing:

My content.

Most small to mid-sized businesses focus too much on colour palettes and brand kits, but forget that neither will get them more clients alone.

Yes, they're important, especially when you're optimising fine details. 

But the only way to get more leads without depending on referrals is by making yourself visible.

Start with this:

1) Turn your competitor's best-performing hooks into frameworks
2) Go to recent client calls
3) Find 5-10 problems you solved
4) Write content about these client stories, using the hooks you swiped in the 2nd step

And to get eyes on your content…

6) Engage with 25-30 accounts a day
7) Send 20 connection requests and 10 DMs every weekday to your ICP
11) Learn how to count

Do this for 90 days.

You’ll get more opportunities than a $5K landing page.

It's been 2 years since I quit bioengineering to build personal brands.
I still know nothing. Here's some advice:

1) Don't try to reinvent the wheel

See what others in your industry are doing. Emulate their hooks, content ideas, and post structures. Use your own positioning.

2) Tell more stories

There are no original ideas, but there are 1000 original stories. Humans have used them to share information for millennia. They're literally ingrained in our DNA.

3) Impressions ≠ money

Virality is useful to get eyes on your profile, but it doesn't guarantee sales. Build a funnel to convert the attention into clients.

4) Don't overthink it

Yes, it's worth going into deep psychology to write the perfect hook, but don't let that paralyse you from posting at all.

5) Teach as much as you can about your industry

You won't lose business from showing the strategies. People still need to know how to implement your lessons in their specific case. That's when they hire you.

These two years have been wild.

Excited for what's to come!

Last Saturday, I wrote 5 posts in 45 minutes.

My No. 1 toxic trait:

I'm a chronic procrastinator when it comes to my own content.

I put client work in front of well, everything, but especially my own marketing.

This usually leads me to either…

1) Quickly drafting something up 5 minutes before I have to post
2) Not posting at all
3) Copy/paste repurposing 

So I did something different this time.

As the week went by, whenever I got an idea or found a hook/post from a creator that inspired me, I'd:

- Write a quick draft in my notes
- Keep adding ideas and angles as they come
- Not worry about structure or spelling

On Saturday, I did a 45-minute sprint, cleaning it all up.

The night before posting, I do a quick re-check.

So yeah, maybe more like 80 minutes total.

Curious, what's your content flow?

Last year, I worked on the personal brand of a founder who had an investment bank with a revolutionary technical feature in the industry.  

He had an incredible life story with the potential of going viral multiple times. 

(Unfortunately, I can't tell it due to NDAs.)

But he'd say it wasn't worth sharing, because the types of clients they needed to attract (startups and investors) didn't react to those.

Yet, I kept forcing them into the strategy instead of aligning with his goals.

He eventually stopped posting.

After 1.5 years, I can confidently say I knew nothing.

I still believe it would be worth testing his stories to see if they worked.

But I've grown a lot more brands since then, and I see it differently now...

• We could've told stories about clients
• We could've told stories about famous figures
• We could've told stories from people similar to his ICP

Our method wasn't the only method.

There are a thousand roads that lead to the same destination.

Choose the one that suits you best.

2 weeks ago, my post about AI went bonkers. 

But it was the simplest idea ever:

- 514 likes
- 30,000 impressions
- 35 reposts
- 94 profile views

The post was about how founders should start by writing all their posts manually before using AI, to train their brains to spot and feel good content.

Part of why it took off is because it was an honest opinion on a divisive topic (using AI vs not using AI).

On the one hand, it got reshared by people who are on the same train.

On the other hand, I got comments from readers who disagreed with me.

This drove discussion, emotion (good and bad), and led people to feel the need to engage.

Thought leadership isn't about regurgitating others' ideas. 

It's about sharing your authentic thoughts (wild, I know).

Post your opinions. Be honest. And don't shy away when people disagree with you.

It means others will stand by you.

P.S.

Check the comments for the post link and extra methods I used :)

The true worth of your personal brand isn't in your impressions.

It's in something much more powerful...

Your:

• Influence
• Reputation
• Bank account
• Quality of engagement
• Number of people helped

There are accounts with > 100,000 followers with no power.
There are personal brands with < 10K followers changing lives.

Most business owners are working in the 1st domain.

But smart founders operate in the 2nd.

Become part of the top 5%:

• Inspire action with personal stories
• Educate to prove you're follow-worthy
• Build your tribe by voicing your opinions
• Share case studies to show you're competent
• Eat cucumber with sugar to gain superpowers

Would you rather be viral for a day or valuable for a lifetime?

♻ Repost | Follow Nickolas Carlos Grothe for more on building a personal brand that attracts your ideal client.

The founders with the best-performing personal brands I've helped grow have 1 thing in common:

They're interesting.

• A Dubai-focused entrepreneur
• A real estate investor who works in law
• A capital raiser who fled an ex-communist country

Your story and personality become your competitive advantage because they're unique to you.

Now, the founders above obviously lead unique lives.

But what if you don't have that "spice"?

As a business owner, there are 2 sides to this:

1) Your life (personal stories)

You don't need to jump off a plane without a parachute to have something to say.

You just need to be you.

People resonate with real experiences and the emotions behind them.

No matter how simple they seem.

2) Your business

Your ICP wants to see your day-to-day life and get an insight into how you're doing business:

• Results for a specific client
• A new mechanism you created
• What you're up to (in real time)
• Your philosophies around your work
• Stories about how you failed a customer

Being interesting doesn't mean being extraordinary.

Being interesting means showing up as yourself.

taplio

The Battle

Jesse Futia

Nickolas Carlos Grothe

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreNickolas Carlos Grothe's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Jesse Futia

Nickolas Carlos Grothe

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nickolas Carlos Grothe's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNickolas Carlos Grothe's LinkedIn Performance