Followers
286.4K
About this metric
Public follower count at check time.
Josh Braun LinkedIn stats
LinkedInjosh-braun
Profile data checked Aug 6, 2026, 3:58 PM
Report generated Sep 29, 2026, 12:28 AM · Methodology
64/100
Mixed profile signals
Experience
2
About this metric
Public experience entries returned with the profile.
Education
11
About this metric
Public education entries returned with the profile.
Posts sampled
8
About this metric
Dated recent posts returned with the public profile.
Category scores
Out of 100Sampled response
Limited
2/100
Expertise consistency
Limited
48/100
Career depth
Mixed
67/100
About clarity
Strong
82/100
Recent activity
Strong
90/100
Profile foundation
Strong
100/100
Post context
Strong
100/100
Search context
Strong
100/100
Proof of work
Strong
100/100
Bio and content
8 of 8 posts analyzedThe bio clearly states the profile's purpose and main topics, making the identity and expected content evident.
Audience
Skeptical sales prospects
Positioning
Radically honest sales approach
Bio/content match
MixedThe profile promotes a radically honest approach to sales, focusing on asking and drawing people in rather than pitching and forcing compliance.
Recent LinkedIn posts
8 sampledPosting pace
1.9/week
Calculated from the dates in the captured authored-post sample.
Typical post response
34.5
Median reactions and comments across 8 sampled posts.
Responses / 1K followers
0.12
Median public reactions and comments per 1,000 public followers. This is not impression-based engagement.
Comment share
24.7%
82 of 332 sampled responses were comments.
Response consistency
83%
Median sampled response divided by average sampled response; lower values indicate a few posts dominate.
Authored articles
10
Authored LinkedIn articles returned in the public profile.
Projects and publications
1
Projects and publications returned in the public profile.
Recommendations
2
Public recommendations returned with the profile.
There’s a lot of sales advice about getting the next step.
“Let’s get some time on the calendar next week.”
“Do you have your calendar handy?”
The thinking is that if you don’t keep moving buyers from one stage to the next, you’ll lose the deal.
Let’s test that assumption.
Imagine you’ve been looking for a house for six months.
One morning, the perfect home hits the market. It’s in the right neighborhood, the layout is exactly what you wanted, and it’s within your budget.
Does the realtor have to convince you to schedule a showing?
Or are you asking:
“When can I see it?”
When people genuinely want something, they don’t need to be pulled forward.
They naturally lean in.
That’s why I don’t suggest the next step.
Instead I ask:
“Where would you like to go from here?”
I’m not trying to move the sale forward.
I’m trying to understand their motivation.
Sometimes they say:
“Can we schedule a demo?”
Sometimes they ask what I recommend.
Sometimes they say they’re not ready.
Sometime they say let me circulate this internally.
All answers are useful.
Because the next step isn’t something I talked them into.
It’s something that came from them.
The best next step isn’t the one the salesperson proposes.
It’s the one the buyer wants. 15 10When you pitch, you steer people toward your conclusion.
Pitching sounds like this:
“We’ve developed a breakthrough for increasing email deliverability. The reason for my call is to share this breakthrough with you. Do you have your calendar?”
They might agree.
But they don’t show for the meeting.
Pitching is like pushing people to a decision you’ve already made.
Forcing compliance.
Shutting down choice.
People retreat when they’re told what to do or how to think.
The opposite of pitching is asking.
If you ask people about a potential problem, you draw them in.
You invite them to co-explore, which means they have autonomy.
Asking about a potential problem sounds like this:
“Not sure about you folks, but we often hear that even with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in place, half of the cold emails SDRs send still land in spam. How are you handling that on your end?”
No pushing.
No convincing.
No persuading.
Some people will lean in.
Some won’t.
Both are okay.
It’s not your job to talk people into buying.
You’re job is to sort.
This shifts you from commander to collaborator.
When people help discover the problem, they don’t need to be sold on the solution. 11 4People ask how to get past call screeners.
The moment your goal becomes getting past the screener, it’s easy to start looking for tricks.
Here’s one I’ve heard:
Call someone and say:
“Hey Josh, it’s just…”
Then hang up.
The idea is they’ll be curious enough to call you back.
Maybe.
But imagine how they’ll feel when they discover it was a salesperson using curiosity as bait.
People aren’t dumb.
They know when they’re being worked.
That usually happens when we’re attached to the outcome.
If your offer is genuinely valuable, you don’t need tricks.
You can be transparent.
If someone is interested, they’ll take your call or respond to your follow-up email.
If they’re not, that’s okay.
You’ll call someone else.
Do the work.
Detach from the outcome.
A transparent voicemail sounds more like this:
“Hey Josh, this is Amanda. We haven’t met. I follow you on LinkedIn and saw your posts generated 3,782 comments over the last 3 months. We identify which commenters lead outbound sales teams so you can reach out about your Selling Without Pitching workshop. I’ll send you a few names by email.”
You don’t need to manufacture curiosity.
Relevance is enough. 24 10Here's a lesser known way to stack the odds of getting a reply to your cold email.
Good cold email copy isn't written.
It's found.
Step 1.
Go looking for complaints.
Not yours.
Your customers.
Bonus points for emotionally charged language. "Nightmare." "Impossible." "Every single time."
The rule?
It has to be in quotes. Something a customer said not marketing.
Here's one I found:
"Determining payouts involved a lot of manual data entry and customizing reports for individual reps. Hard-pasting entire Excel pages into Google Sheets, then adjusting one sheet at a time. The more we scaled, the more of a nightmare it became."
Step 2.
Copy it. Paste it. Barely change it.
Here's the email that comes out:
"Pete, you're calculating comp for 128 reps. That often means manually copying Excel data into Google Sheets and customizing reports one rep at a time."
You didn't write that.
Your customer did.
You just borrowed the words.
Here's another one I found:
"If reps wanted to know what made up their attainment, they had to jump into Salesforce and connect the dots. Nothing was in one place."
Here's the email:
"Pete, Lainey and Sam shouldn't have to dig through Salesforce to connect the dots on their own comp. Nothing's in one place."
You get the idea.
One complaint per email.
Sent to the same role that made the complaint.
Where do you find them?
G2. Reddit. Podcast transcripts. The "before" story buried in your competitor's case study.
The internet is full of people describing your prospect's pain in their own words.
The idea is to sound like the inside of the prospect's head.
It feels like being read.
Stop writing cold emails.
Start finding them. 33 9My neighbor has a 3-year-old daughter.
Every time I come over, she says the same thing:
"I want to show you my room!"
I've met the same teddy bear enough times that I ask how he's doing.
I've seen the same children's Bible so many times I know Noah is about to build the ark before he does.
And yet every single visit…
It's the greatest room tour in history.
Then I realized.
She wasn't showing me the room because it changed.
She was showing me the room because she had.
At 3, every day feels different.
A drawing that wasn't there yesterday.
A toy that's suddenly the favorite.
A pillow fort that's now a castle.
To her, it's all brand new.
That's the thing about kids.
They don't just notice life.
They keep rediscovering it.
We don't.
We walk the same rooms. Drive the same streets. Talk to the same people.
Until it all starts to feel ordinary.
One day she'll grow out of room tours.
I hope I don't.
Because ordinary isn't the absence of wonder.
It's what wonder looks like when you've stopped paying attention. 61 8Imagine you’re walking down the street.
You notice a stranger a few steps ahead of you.
Head down.
Eyes glued to their phone.
Totally checked out.
You also notice what they don’t.
Dog poo.
Right in their path.
You could keep walking.
You could think, not my problem.
You could worry about interrupting them.
Or you could say,
“Hey. Watch out for the dog poo.”
They don’t get defensive.
They don’t say, who asked you.
They say thank you.
And keep walking.
Because you weren’t selling.
You weren’t judging.
You were pointing out something they couldn’t see yet.
That’s the mindset shift with cold calling.
You don’t have to show up small.
You don’t have to apologize for interrupting.
You don’t have to be “one down.”
If you’re illuminating a potential problem,
especially one people are often blind to,
you’re doing them a favor.
When you hold that frame,
your voice changes.
Your body relaxes.
You feel grounded.
Equal.
Calm.
A few years ago, I got a cold call from Kendra at Gravy Solutions.
She didn’t pitch.
She didn’t assume.
She didn’t try to convince me of anything.
She said,
“Josh, I know you sell courses. When a credit card fails, how are you recovering those payments. Are you handling that yourself, or using an external team?”
That was it.
Neutral.
Curious.
Helpful.
She wasn’t trying to step over me.
She was trying to help me not step in something.
Cold calling isn’t bothering people.
It’s tapping them on the shoulder before the mess. 25 10Do you sweat like a substitute teacher when you cold call?
Here's why.
Your intent is to book a meeting.
And intent leaks.
When your job is to book the meeting, you put pressure on yourself.
You put pressure on the prospect too.
Pressure makes you sweat.
Same intent.
Same behavior.
Same sweaty feeling.
The cure isn't a better script.
It's a different intent.
Drop "my job is to book a meeting."
Pick up "my job is to find out if there's a problem."
That one shift changes everything.
Here's why.
In discovery mode you're not attached to the outcome.
No problem? Fine.
Then they don't need what you've got.
You thank them and call the next person.
You're relaxed and chill.
You're leaning back.
So how do you find out if there's a problem?
Stop explaining.
Start asking.
Like this:
"When calls come in after hours, are you using an answering service, automated texts that say you'll follow up in the morning, or an AI dispatcher that takes the call and books the appointment?"
No pitch.
Just a question.
Different intent.
Different behavior.
Different body temp. 23 8This is one of my favorite words to use in a cold email.
I'll tell you the word in a second.
First, a climber.
Alex Honnold was the first person to climb El Capitan without ropes.
900 meters of vertical rock.
No harness.
No net.
Just his hands.
"Without ropes" is the hook.
It pulls you in.
Climb it with ropes and nobody looks up.
Here's the point.
Your prospect isn't waiting for you to show up.
They're already getting the job done.
They're climbing the mountain.
Just with ropes.
The word is "without."
Use it to name what makes you meaningfully different.
Here's the formula:
(Desired result) without (the thing that sucks).
Philipp Alexander Ströhmann: "ACME grew to $7m ARR without hiring salespeople, cold calling, or running ads."
Athletic Greens: "Get 75 essential greens without having to eat them."
A triathlon coach: "Finish an Ironman without training 16 hours a week."
A podcast service: "Publish polished podcasts without editing."
A course creator: "Get your first 100 clients without running ads."
Same result they already want.
Minus the part they hate.
What's your "without" sentence? 58 23
Public reactions and comments
8 posts with countsProfessional signals
Career depth
13 entries
Public profile: 2 experience + 11 education
Proof of work
13
Public profile: 10 articles + 1 portfolio items + 2 recommendations
Authored activity
100%
Visible activity: 8 authored, 0 shared, 0 liked, 0 other
Response consistency
83%
Sampled posts: Median 34.5 / average 41.5
Category details
Sampled response
Public response is small relative to the visible audience, sparse, or uneven.
- 8 of 8 posts received a public response
- 0.12 median responses per 1,000 followers
- 83% median-to-average consistency
Expertise consistency
The profile promotes a radically honest approach to sales, focusing on asking and drawing people in rather than pitching and forcing compliance.
- Be the mint scoop in a sea of vanilla sales messages so you can start more conversations with skeptical prospects.
- Imagine you’ve been looking for a house for six months.
Career depth
The public profile shows limited career depth in the fields returned.
- 2 experience entries
- 11 education entries
- Current organization: Braun Training
About clarity
The bio clearly states the profile's purpose and main topics, making the identity and expected content evident.
- Be the mint scoop in a sea of vanilla sales messages so you can start more conversations with skeptical prospects.
- I created the Badass Growth Guide to eliminate commission breath.
Recent activity
The captured profile includes several current authored posts.
- 8 dated posts returned
- Newest post is 53 days old
Profile foundation
The public profile has substantial identity and career context.
- About section found
- 2 experience entries
- Location: Boca Raton, Florida, United States
Post context
Most sampled posts include enough visible text to evaluate their subject and argument.
- 8 of 8 posts included text
- 8 of 8 posts contained at least 120 characters
Search context
The public profile supplies clear professional and topic context.
- Organization: Braun Training
- Location: Boca Raton, Florida, United States
- Post topics: people, email, imagine
Proof of work
The public profile backs its positioning with visible authored work or third-party evidence.
- 10 authored articles
- 1 projects or publications
- 2 recommendations returned
Profile roast
josh-braun built a crowd and trained it to keep scrolling.
josh-braun · C · 64/100
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