It started with a Craigslist ad and zero clue what I was doing.
I stumbled into affiliate marketing. To make affiliate marketing work, I had to learn to build websites, which led me to WordPress. To get those sites found, I had to learn SEO.
And somewhere along the way, businesses started asking me to do for them what I was doing for myself. That’s how I accidentally found myself running an agency.
But everything changed when I started using LinkedIn not just to connect, but to sell. In this episode of Founders’ Future, I chat with Ammar Elm and dive deep into my journey from early experiments in affiliate marketing to building an AI-powered platform helping B2B teams maximize sales through LinkedIn.
The problem that led to Luminetics
Running the agency, I kept seeing the same thing. Founders and sales teams knew LinkedIn mattered, but they had no system. They’d post when they remembered to. They’d send the same generic connection request to everyone.
It wasn’t a strategy; it was a hope. And I was building custom playbooks for every single client to fix that.
And that’s what led to Luminetics.
We turned what I knew into an AI-powered platform that helps B2B teams turn LinkedIn into a pipeline machine. Think tools like Lumi Post Writer, on-demand content prompts, and a full enablement system that quickly scales what works.
Why the old way of social selling doesn’t work anymore
The old way of doing social selling is dead:
- Spray-and-pray DMs
- Cold connect requests
- Generic pitches copy-pasted to five hundred strangers a week
It’s lazy, and buyers are over it. They can spot a template from a mile away, and they ignore it on sight.
What actually works now on LinkedIn
What works now? Relevance, speed, and personalization.
Showing up in someone’s feed with something that actually applies to them, right when they’re paying attention, not six weeks later in a cold DM.
That’s a lot to do consistently, by hand, every single day. That’s where AI fits in, making it easier to show up the right way, every day, without it turning into a full-time job on top of your actual job.
Your LinkedIn strategy should lead somewhere
More impressions are nice. But more qualified conversations are better.
The Next Wave helps B2B professionals get clear on their message, show up consistently, and use LinkedIn to generate real opportunities. Get the complete social selling system, custom AI tools trained to help your content sound like you, live coaching, and ongoing support from people who know how to turn LinkedIn activity into pipeline.
