Darren McKee

My wife said I respond quicker to work emails than I do to her texts.

So she sends me this. 😂

Little humor for today!

I got called out for “liking” my own posts.

Of course I liked it, I wrote it.

Lexus trying to showcase that third row space but let me tell you a little about the current state of marketing.

This photo would have gone viral if you would have shown me how it fits 3 scooters, 4 bags of all different sizes, a kid mattress because one kid only sleeps on that, a clothes basket full of sheets, a Trader Joe’s freezer bag, a mini cooler and a dog.

Because no parent travels this way, like never.

Real talk, the TX Hybrid is pretty fire though.

Real life marketing is in.

Staged marketing is out.

✌️

“My BDR“ 🤮

Hey Account Executives. “A BDR is not YOURS“

You are partners

You are a team

You are equals

That is it.

Thanks for joining my tedtext.

#sales #tedtalk #BDR #SDR

I’m leaving Utah today, long day of travel ahead. Yesterday - for the first time in a few years, I decided to not make a post here and it felt really good tbh. I’ve always prided myself on being the person that shows up every day but over the last few months it just felt a wee bit forced. Posting things I didn’t really want to, repurposing content and overall just feeling like I was losing my desire to write and create.

So I paused.

Moving forward, I’m not really sure. Will share probably 80% of the days ahead but not if I don’t want to, sheesh that feels good to type.

Anyways, Utah LFG - you were so good to me as always. Forever grateful to this land and the people that live here, so much love.

Back to the travel, who knows how that will go today 😂

I’ve got idk like 8 hours of just hanging out in planes and airports and will answer any question that is dropped below on any of these topics:

Sales
Content
LinkedIn
Founder Life
Side Hustles
Coaching Offerings
Fishing
Hunting

Eh and whatever else you want to ask about!

I’m on a mission to slow down.

On Saturday morning, I grabbed the kids and headed to southern virginia (oak level - basset to be exact)

This is where my parents, grandparents and great grandparents were raised. It’s also where I was born until heading to Texas at 7 years old.

Yesterday at 2PM, my dad drove in and told me to get in the truck.

For the next 3 hours he showed me everything.

The furniture plant he worked at.

The furniture plant my grandfather worked at.

The furniture plant my great grandfather worked at.

The furniture plant every other human in my family worked at… (guess I messed this trend up 😂)

Then we headed out into the woods, dad wanted me to walk the same trails my great grandfather walked, pretty darn special tbh.

After that, I took my little one out to go bottle hunting - this is moonshne country so we found some epic stuff in some old barns, sure as hell beats YouTube.

Cell phone didn’t work.
Nothing flashy out there.
Got a 6 pack of beer for $5.97
Grabbed a sausage biscuit for $1.50
Every truck you passed waved
50% of the trucks stopped and talked to us

No idea why I’m writing this here but just doing it, kind of tired of all the scale automate and ai stuff.

So here’s a little journal entry 10/26/25

Where were you born?

Over the last 7 days I went a tad rogue here and didn’t think one time about formatting or hooks or structure or time of day I posted, I just wrote like a human and put thoughts and tips out into the world. Impressions and engagements up 96% this week, 800 followers gained, 822 saves of content, 922 of darrenmckee.co or 531social.com clicked, 12 hours of videos watched which resulted in a top 5 revenue week for me in 2025.

Please don’t believe the people that say this place is trending down, it’s not. But it 100% is trending down for those that look like others and have abandoned being a human.

Humans win.
Trust wins.

"Stop asking so many people for help, just go read your bible and spend some time alone. The answers will come."

"Stop stacking your days with meetings that don't matter, your calendar is owning you vs you owning it."

"Your Utah trip. Why are you cramming in so many things? Just go for walks and talk to Jesus a bit while looking at some things you don't normally see."

"I know you love the founder podcasts and music because you think that is what is going to help but you should probably read this little book today instead, proceeds to toss it to me."

Things my best friend told me this morning.

A day in the life of a founder who thinks they can do it all alone.

Opened the bible.
Cancelled 11 meeting for in November.
Moved meetings in Utah to be alone in the mountains.
Still listened to music and podcasts, working on that one.

Clarity gained. Decisions made. Feeling better. Shoulders relaxed.

Just a friendly reminder that you can burn out even if you love what you do for work.

While I wouldn’t say I truly entered the state of burn out, I got super super close here the last 2 months.

Go go go
Build build build
Scale scale scale
Innovate innovate innovate
Automate automate automate

Sun up to sun down, work related tasks.
Waking up checking emails.
Going to bed checking emails.
Podcasts about work.
Zero lunch breaks.
Family getting 60% of me.
Hobbies went to the wayside.
No breakfast sit down time.
Talking about work with friends.
Thinking about efficiency all the time.

Luckily, I caught myself.

Off to Utah to fish, do a little talk, breathe some fresh air and laugh with friends.

I needed a reset.
I needed a change of pace.
I needed time with Jesus.

P.S. - I know many people will say I’m dumb for sharing this type of stuff but it’s just reality and I want others to understand that this stuff is real.

8 days ago, I sent out 13 personalized messages to some top prospects via a LinkedIn DM - some video, some audio and a few just regular text outbound.

1. No response (but they viewed my profile)
2. No response
3. No response (but they viewed my profile)
4. No response
5. Meeting booked (responded Thursday)
6. Meeting booked (responded Tuesday)
7. No response
8. No response
9. No response (but they engaged with a post of mine Friday)
10. No response
11. No response
12. No response
13. Meeting booked (Responded same day)

When I was first starting out in sales, these types of posts used to make me so frustrated, lead magnet to learn more 🤢

Just save this, you don’t to hit me up to see the messages I send..

Now, I’m in the position to share these types of posts but I will NEVER share them without taking you behind the scenes and walking you through my process, step by step.

Step 1

Create content, 4 pillar framework (will put the visual down in the thread for you, steal it)

Step 2

Get "connected" with your prospect. Do this by engaging with their content, checking out their profile, being in the same threads as them, etc.

Step 3

Study your prospect and their business. Know A LOT. 10-K, Sustainability, Recent Hires, Current Vendors, etc. You should know so much that if you meet with them, they want to hire you.

Step 3

Send the message, video dm preferably

Relevance
Problem
Solution
CTA

"Mike. Appreciate the connect today. Next time I am in Park City I will reach out and we can do dinner, have a few good cro friends out that way. Maybe we can put together a group. Anyways, I’m 17 months post my VP of sales career and am full force on my own now, helping other revenue leaders simplify social selling and linkedin for their teams, it was 80% of our revenue at my last org - had to do the math when we exited the org to own of our largest competitors!

Quick audit and it looks like you have 17 AE's but only 1 of them has created content in the last 30 days and only 3 have left comments on their prospects content in the last 60 days. Big miss here, easy one to fix though. You have time next week for me to ring your cell?"

Step 4

Respond IMMEDIATELY when they do, they are active and you want to capitalize on that.

Step 5

Book the meeting, don't send your calendar link or anything like that and don't ask for their email address, you should know it. If you have to, just confirm what you have.

Step 6

Put that meeting in your Hubspot and pat yourself on the back. I’m still working on that part.

Conclusion:

Happy Prospecting. And yes, I do this stuff every single day.

Offerings: (darrenmckee.co)

1:1 Coaching
Team Training (in-person or virtual)
Cohort (December open now, half sold out)
Speaking (Booking for 2026 NOW)

Fun new one 😳

December 10K Cohort Sponsorship:

Team Training 60 Minutes
1:1 Coaching for CRO or Founder (45 min)
2 posts mentioning the sponsorship
1 spot in December cohort
1 531social.com license

“If you don’t engage with others, it won’t matter how good your content is.”

That’s the first thing I tell every single person that comes to me for help growing on this platform.

This is one of the few places where people don’t really care if you are a ceo, 3x founder or exec at a fortune 500.

So before I ever teach them how to create solid content, I tell them to do this.

(go ahead and save this so you can come back to it later)

- 5 comments to 1st degree connections (prospects and clients - not peers)

- 5 comments to 2nd degree connections (switching feed to recent helps)

- Responses to all comments on your content (respond with a question)

- 5 DMs (video if possible - profile view folks, prospects, engagement, etc)

- 3 connection requests (don't expect connections if you don't connect)

That takes about 20-34 minutes 👆

If they can’t do this, all the other stuff I’m teaching them in weeks 2-4 won’t matter.

Hope this helps someone today.

There are 67 sales books in your office but your buyer is a head of procurement.

Your LinkedIn feed is filled with sales people but your buyer is a head of talent development.

The conference you are at is full of sales people but your buyer is a head of information technology.

See how this doesn’t make sense, do this instead 👇

Read what your buyers read.
Fill your feed with your buyers content.
Go to conferences to learn with your buyers.

The moment I stopped SURROUNDING myself with “sales stuff” was the moment I started to crush my number quarter after quarter.

This week, LinkedIn had me present to 350 of their Sales Navigator customers. Before the session, I was asked about my slides/deck for the training.

I responded, “I run without slides. This will be more of a teaching session with me actually showing folks how to do stuff instead of screenshots.”

This is my coaching philosophy, show don’t tell. They want to know you still have the sauce, that you actually still do this stuff day in and day out.

Visually walk someone through the process then pause and ask them to do it.

My goal is never to deliver slides that recap my session. My goal is always to have those attending learn 1-2 things that will transform their next month.

It’s different. It’s me.

A couple things:

Many of you asked last week if I could help get your reps up to speed with LinkedIn and Sales Nav, yes totally can. Below are a few ways.

1:1 Coaching
Group Cross-Company Coaching
In-Person Team Training
Virtual Team Training
SKO (discount if clear blue water is involved)

Most stuff is here darrenmckee.co

If you need testimonials, there are 100+ down on the bottom of my page here - have fun!

Talking about hobbies will book more first meetings than any work related post ever will, I can promise you that.

The bar for being a human has never been lower.

I love fishing. Anyone else?

Today I walked into my old employer’s office, company called Insperity. Been gone 5 years and still their biggest fan. They didn’t ask me to post this but I’m doing it anyways.

Listen. Running a company is hard. The back office, the hr stuff, the crazy world of healthcare, the payroll - it’s all a zoo at times.

To be honest, as a founder - we just want to run our business and take care of our customers.

And yes, they will be my first call when we start to bring on employees at 531social.com which will be in a few short months.

Grateful for the time I spent there, truly a world class organization led by remarkable humans!

Tactical content opens doors, personal content closes deals.

90,000,000 impressions with zero dollars of ad spend. That is the power of this place when you commit for 5 years and 7 months. Those numbers above are how many times my content has been displayed on someone else’s feed.

Impressions aren’t everything but for me, they are a huge data point when I dive deep into tracking and tracing new relationships and revenue. Also dig engagement metrics and those are at 200K for the last 365, honestly more happy about that than the 90M.

It’s taken me a very long time.

I could have taken short cuts.

I could have implemented strategies that went against my beliefs.

But, I chose to put my head down, study and master the art of authentic storytelling.

And it feel super comforting laying down at night knowing that I did this my way and now I can help others do the same, “their way.”

Seeing my feed filled with people that have worked with me, yea that’s the good stuff.

Seeing those same people hire for their team because of recent growth, yea that’s the good stuff.

Seeing those same people raise seed - b rounds, yea that’s the good stuff.

Seeing those same people celebrate massive 6 figure contract wins, yea that’s the good stuff.

Seeing those same people transform their side business into their own personal ventures, yea that’s the good stuff.

Seeing those same people generate more eyeballs than their entire marketing department, yea that’s the good stuff.

Feeling like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

Transferring what I know to other people and helping them do it in 15 months vs 5 years and 7 months.

P.S. - December Cohort is getting close to 50% capacity which is insane to me considering we are still a month out. No, I am not doing one for November - taking some down time to comeback refreshed to end the year and start the new.

Here is a quick tip that will help you close more deals, it truly is revolutionary. Get on a plane and present all proposals over 70K in ACV (Annual Contract Value) - stop sitting behind your laptop when all of your decision makers are in the same office in Minnesota watching you struggle to screen share your proposal slide.

The revolutionary thing is sarcasm fyi. Listen, I am coaching sales teams around the world right now and the data says that plane tickets = quota attaining reps.

To the CFO or CRO who are declining a $600 plane ticket, $350 hotel and $300 bill in food, stop doing that. It is the equivalent of one of your reps asking for you to get them a coach and you saying no - MAKES ZERO SENSE. If you need data, go look at your "closed won" deals over the last 7 years and back into ACV and "win stories" and you will see a direct correlation with "in-person time" and revenue.

P.S. - If you are a rep and get approval to go present that proposal, please for the love of all things sales, BOOK OTHER MEETINGS WHEN YOU ARE IN TOWN so that your report can say - "Presented 217K ARR deal to ABC Company, did lunch with a closed lost opp from last year and ended up having an in person meeting with Joe from Target. Oh and snuck into a little happy hour event with some industry folks and locked in 3 meetings for next week, well worth the $1250."

Around 466K people have viewed my LinkedIn profile since early 2022, you might want to save this post because I am going to tell you why this deeply matters and how to possibly achieve this yourself. And no, nothing is gated - you just get it here by reading.

When you get someone to your profile:

they can binge content (learn)
they can read recommendations (trust)
they can go to your website (tracking & revenue)
they can confirm authenticity (more trust)
they can see where you engage (new people to learn from)
they can see common connections (more trust)
they can read about you (curiosity)

How to do it:

1 - Comment often on other's content because this puts your name in rooms you have never been in before. Not just little comments because you feel like you have to but deep and interesting thought filled engagement. And for the LOVE OF ALL THINGS LINKEDIN - please stop engaging solely with your 1st degree connections. Aim for 15 comments per day to new people.

2 - Create content from 4 pillars, you can't look the same daily. The 4 pillars are here in this post via a visual (https://lnkd.in/ekkgGrgs)

3 - Follow 5 people daily, many of you expect followers but never follow anyone.

4 - Connect with humans you actually want to engage with, it is wildly important to actually take a look at someone's profile before you add them into your sphere. Do they post? Do they engage? Can you learn from them? Do you have common connections? Are they kind? Do they add value to you? Can you add value to them?

5 - Recognize people when they actually visit your page. Closed my largest deal of the year with a CMO of a massive org by simply saying, "Mark! Thanks for stopping by, appreciate you." Went on to coach his entire revenue org out west.

6 - Don't be afraid to click the repost (don't add thoughts) when you see good content in your feed, I am tracking this data hard right now and my profile views deeply spike when I do this - gets you into another sphere of talented humans.

7 - DM's are everything. New connections, dm them. Old connections, dm them. Introduce people to people in DMs (did you know you can send group dms to folks? yea that is a game changer)

8 - Be sure your profile is complete. Headline easy to read, like 5th grade level. About section filled out. Featured section done. Banner photo complete. Recommendations down below. The list goes on but you have to have get your house in order here if you want people to come visit.

Ok.

That is enough now, go do some of this stuff and watch what happens over the next 15 months. Your mind will be blown by the opportunities that fall into your lap after 450 days of consistency!!

darrenmckee.co
531social.com

A few things I’m most proud of over the last couple of months:

Officially 3 months without email on my phone for my new company, desktop access only.

Committed to a 9AM-3PM schedule and have only had a couple days where I failed at this, huge difference and revenue hasn’t changed.

Officially signed up for a personal trainer, business was growing but so was my weight and that needed to change. 24 me will be back shortly.

Become comfortable saying no to things I don’t really value or care to do, even if that means losing money or upsetting people.

Spent way more time outside enjoying nature and picking up old hobbies with old and new friends.

But, to be honest - I don’t really like content like this because it seems unattainable for some. “Some” was me not that long ago.

And I’m going to keep it real, I couldn’t do all of these things above if I hadn’t put an insane amount of effort into my craft over the last 10+ years.

Your time to slow down is just around the corner, and my hope is that it doesn’t take you as long as it took me.

Being a founder is terrifying at times, every day there are 31 things that go wrong and it can be an emotionally draining experience.

Today I was having one of those days, so I picked up the phone and called a guy that I knew would pick me up and speak to me slowly but with accuracy.

If you don’t know Alex Boyd then I’m sorry, and if you do then you will totally understand this post.

Grateful for founders that answer the phone calls from other fellow founders.

You are a gem, dude.

Some odd work things I do:

I use the desktop version of LinkedIn 90% of the time.

I don't schedule content here, just post when it feels right or when a thought hits my brain - posting at the same time daily is probably crippling your impact but that is just my take.

I rarely take my laptop out of my office space.

I don't really work from home, choose to go into an office from 9-3 daily. Call me weird but it just feels right to me.

I am very very close to having zero email access on my phone, down to ONE.

I do not have any AI tools as apps on my phone, desktop only.

I work off of one screen, laptop only.

I am up to 50% of my meetings being on the phone while walking or in the car vs zoom or google meet.

I rarely respond to a "work" email post 5PM, we are in sales - we aren't surgeons. If someone needs me NOW, they can text me.

I don't use slides for my trainings or presentations, just my thoughts paired with words and a lot of show and tell.

I choose to fly to important meetings vs sitting at my standup desk from on a tiny screen.

I try to meet 3 people every single week that were non existent to me last week, this has been a massive unlock.

I don't believe that working more hours makes your more money, I think it might actually hurt you in the long run and cause you to lose in many other areas of life.

Alright, that is enough.

Time to go get ready for a dove hunt tomorrow with the family.

It took me 16 years of working for other people before I took a leap and started working for myself. And sheesh, I’m glad it took me that long because this stuff is insanely hard and all the things I learned from those previous leaders and founders have set me up to have a fruitful next few years being self employed.

I know all the posts out there tell you to jump and to bet on yourself and that YOU CAN DO IT, but I’m also a firm believer in building the foundation and making data and heart driven decision.

Learn all you can.
Build on the side.
Get to 130% of your w2 pay.
Then jump.

Might take 16 years like me.

Or don’t, and have a wonderful career being an “in”trepreneur where you build inside of companies and change lives that way!

Million dollar deals are being closed every single day because of people sharing content and engaging with their community and prospects here on LinkedIn, this place is on an absolute tear right now - never seen it as dialed in as it is today.

A few years back, I was told that LinkedIn & Social Selling was a fad and that it would fade away but here we are 2, 3 and 4 years later absolutely stacking wins for my clients. From B2B SaaS to Commercial Real Estate to Home Services and everything in between, just winning.

Next opportunity to learn:

February Group Coaching which my new banner photo reflects the start date, just opened today and 46/50 slots are currently open. This will be the 18th group of 50 leaders I have put through this since launching darrenmckee.co

Additional opportunities:

Team Coaching
1:1 Coaching
6 - Month Retainer
Speaking (SKO & Offsite)

Will be around today to answer any questions you may have, 160+ testimonials down on the bottom of my page as well if you are looking to see what folks are saying.

Additionally - happy to answer any question you have about sales, linkedin, brand, social selling, content, life, etc.

Fire away.

LinkedIn for real estate agents is legit “blue ocean” right now. Fun chats with my man Ryan Serhant.

To be honest, it’s just “blue ocean” in general.

The bar for content, sales and being a human has never been lower.

This is my fav way to use LinkedIn, it’s legit undefeated. If you had 2 days in San Diego and then 2 days in Miami, what are your go to food choices (breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, desert, etc)

For context. Totally down for maybe one over the top experience per city but we always lean more toward local neighborhood type cuisine. Want to be embraced into the culture of both locations.

Staying in Mission Bay (San Diego)
Staying in Brickell (Miami)

I could as AI but tbh I’m just sick of it and want to talk to some humans, Gemini or GPT or Perplexity hasn’t stepped foot in one of these places, just sayin.