The first thing that caught my eye was his bio. "Co-Founder @ BrewChat. Motivating others on my startup journey."

I thought to myself, "who is he trying to motivate?" A casual scroller of TikTok might follow for that kind of content. But a potential user of BrewChat wants to learn more about how the platform works.

Then I watched the videos and the bio turned out to be true.

His storytelling and dialogue is very engaging. He's shared stories of his father's advice and reminders to always put God first. He also showed more vulnerable moments, like the Zoom demo where the attorneys never showed up. There are plenty of lighter moments too, including his fit check, working while using a walking pad and even driving with the hoodie up.

None of that content is bad. I followed the account because I enjoy the motivation and respect anyone who can publish 103 videos in six months.

The biggest issue I found is that his customer wins are buried on the same channel. The proof points a paying customer needs are squeezed between videos about the trials and tribulations of being a young founder.

Then I looked at the rest of his channels.

The BrewChat TikTok has only one video. Meanwhile his personal account has 103.

The company Instagram account is underutilized. Despite 33 posts and only 375 followers, the production quality and value to a potential customer is the best in the business. Some of the standout posts feature the origin stories of the founders and the company.

The formats are much more varied and include behind-the-scenes looks at life in the office, client success stories and explanations of the platform's best features.

His personal LinkedIn is where he publishes the most, with nearly 200 posts and 2,200 followers. Two out of every three posts he publishes get no comment at all.

And unlike TikTok, LinkedIn is where he actually puts his customer wins in front of people. So I looked at how those wins performed.

"A freaking job was offered through BrewChat last week" got 47 reactions, and you can hear him in it.

"BrewChat just onboarded a powerhouse law firm onto the platform!" got zero.

The first sounds like the founder who talks into his phone in the car. The same guy who narrates his hero’s journey on TikTok. The second sounds like a press release.

On the page that difference reads as minor. Forty-seven reactions against zero says otherwise.

The company LinkedIn page has 112 posts and 535 followers. The majority of those are simply reposts of what the founders already published on their own profiles.

Altogether that comes to roughly 450 pieces of content across five channels in under six months. More than two a day, every day, while helping run a real estate company. Very few founders I meet operate at that rate.

Giavino and Michael built BrewChat because they felt that LinkedIn is broken.

On our call Giavino told me LinkedIn had become a flex, that connections aren't really connections, that when you reach out you're lucky to get a reply, and that if you do get one the back and forth eats whatever momentum you had.

That experience can be disheartening. And it's real for a lot of people on the platform.

From my experience, people don't ignore you on LinkedIn. But you have to give before you can receive. Someone is much more likely to engage with your content if you engage with their content first.

The fix is not to post more.

When you connect with someone on LinkedIn and comment on their posts, you start to show up in their feed. Their network sees you too. The next thing you publish reaches people who already recognize your name.

For a founder building a solution to compete against LinkedIn that's not an easy pill to swallow.

But the reality is that the supply side of BrewChat users are on LinkedIn.

And when the engagement or impressions on LinkedIn don't move, I can see why he returns to TikTok. That's where his network is strongest and the numbers feel better.

A few days after our call, I received an email from BrewChat that said, "Someone wants to connect with you." The request was from a financial advisor at a large bank.

The email gave me his name and the time he wanted but not the reason why. To find out, I had to log into BrewChat. Not exactly frictionless. He said he was looking to grow his network.

What makes BrewChat different from Calendly is how the initiator requests a meeting. They can choose either a written intro or a video intro. With the first option they have to briefly explain why they want to meet with you. With a video option, they only need to send a video. They can choose a video call, phone call or an in-person meeting.

The recipient or host of the call has to approve prior to the meeting being scheduled on their calendar. If you make your Calendly link public, anyone can book time directly on your calendar.

Sending a cold video introduction is the most distinctive thing on the platform, one of Giavino’s favorite features. LinkedIn doesn't let you do that at all without connecting first. Whether people respond well to it is the number I'd most want to see.

Every one of those options makes life easier for the person asking. None of them make the case for being the person asked.

Normally, I wouldn't take a 30-minute call just to schmooze. But I took this one because I wanted to have the complete BrewChat experience.

He turned out to be someone who knew Giavino long before BrewChat existed. That's actually how he joined.

"He just kept blowing up my LinkedIn. Had to be, like, twenty messages." That sounds like Giavino, a guy who uses his charisma to get what he wants.

This caller works in private wealth. His team caters to ultra high net worth individuals with companies valued at $25M and above.

Before we hopped on the call I didn't understand what the draw to BrewChat was for him. He explained that due to compliance, he's practically barred from publishing any content about his job. Any post he wants to publish has to first get routed through a compliance app. He's not allowed to mention products or market opinions. Even beyond that most of what he submits never gets approved.

That's what he loves about BrewChat. He's able to have conversations with people much more easily than on LinkedIn. Also, he said he was wasting too much time cold calling.

He said he's not on the platform to close people and likes to give before he takes.

"I don't go on BrewChat to seek business. I want to create a spider web of referrals."

He's already met a founder building a golf sunscreen, lawyers, doctors and medical supply distributors. He even handed the sunscreen founder a list of contacts at golf courses.

He asked what I did. I told him I work with founders who've built real authority but aren't getting clients from it. I go through everything they've published, find what actually worked, and build the system to run it again.

I could tell he was genuinely interested.

Although I wasn't his target client, I pointed him to the B2B creator side of LinkedIn. I know of founders running businesses right around the revenue threshold his team targets. Young, highly successful, and potentially without the guidance his bank offers.

He hadn't considered that group at all.

On our call I'd asked Giavino who his ideal customer was. He said, "Everybody and anybody when it comes to professionals, students, alumni, anybody, and everybody could use my platform. That's the beauty of it."

I asked because I noticed that he targets just about every category of buyer out there.

And I understand the desire to share your wins. Based on his content these are some of the highlights.

An owner of an insurance company met a man who owns a wholesale company on the platform, and in Giavino's words, "the deal was fricking closed." A residential loan officer connected with a residential broker and they went to lunch.

A guy at the mall told Giavino he was studying to get into wealth management. Giavino told him to sign up on BrewChat and the next morning he had three meetings booked with wealth managers. And when the family real estate business needed a property manager, Giavino ran every interview through BrewChat.

All different businesses, and seeing that answered my question directly.

A student who signs up is only ever on the demand side. A managing partner is only ever on the supply side.

Listen to how he pitches BrewChat. "Are you trying to find the right attorney, the right tech guy, the right consultant, the right construction person, real estate person? I don't know. Whatever it is."

Every piece of content he makes asks people to come and find somebody. So every new user on the demand side makes the user base more imbalanced.

Building the supply side is a much tougher proposition. This side of the equation requires senior decision makers to open their calendar to strangers.

The verdict is still out on how easily he can get them to do that.

BrewChat's best marketing and positioning already exist.

The blog on their website features four posts that argue exactly what the company is and why both LinkedIn and Calendly fail people. The last post was from July 20th.

His co-founder, Michael, wrote the best description of the product anywhere in the business. The problem, the mechanism, a real customer result, and a booking link. The whole thing sits in his LinkedIn About section. The only challenge is Michael almost never posts.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Giavino summed up his entire product in four words. Find. Request. Meet. Remember. That simplified explanation has yet to appear on the homepage, in his TikTok bio or in a video.

Meanwhile the case studies page on their own site still says they're gathering stories from their top users and companies and to check back soon. They already have plenty of successes that just need to get posted.

Then there's the play very few founders would try. He builds completely free demo BrewChat pages for companies he's never spoken to, posts the walkthrough and tags them. The law firm featured in the video never replied, but it didn't matter. Two larger Michigan law firms saw it and reached out, and another company signed up off a different demo.

He's run that play more than once and it keeps bringing people in. He just treats it like one more video.

Giavino doesn’t have an effort or a talent problem, not by a long shot. Very few founders I've spoken to personally have published 450 pieces of content across five channels in six months. Let alone while also running a real estate company.

The pitch, the product explanation, the demo pages and the customer stories already exist. What's missing is the time, or the person, to work out which of those make sense to run again.

He isn't the only founder in that position. Your best performing piece of content is already published. Somebody just has to go back and find it.

- Antonio

P.S. If you've built real authority in your space and your content isn't producing buyers, hit reply. Send me your best performing post and I'll tell you why it worked and what I'd run next. I can do five of these this week.