I’ve grown two agencies from 0 to $120k and $200k p/m in revenue and personally worked with 40+ B2B businesses (agencies + SaaS). I’ve tested over 15+ growth channels over 4 years - hunting for profitable growth channels. In doing so, I discovered how lucrative LinkedIn can be (when done right)

Instead of: 
- Spamming prospects
- Posting irrelevant selfies
- Trying to get likes / comments

Imagine a world where
- Leads book calls inbound
- Sales calls close at 3x higher win rates
- Prospects respect you and see you as an authority 

For Agencies, Coaches & Consultants.... 

If you're good at what you do

And want to make LinkedIn a push channel that gets you Big Clients... 

We’ll show you how we get results like: 

- Lead generation agency adds $22k MRR, closes 4 clients and books 45 calls in 40 days 
- eCom email marketing agency closes $20k, books 28 calls in 90 days
- B2B Paid ads agency adds $100k+ in revenue, closes 5 clients in last 180 days (including Reddit)
- Media Engine book 100 calls in the last 60 days

Book in a call here or DM me 'ABOUT'. 

I’ll tell you what sort of results you could expect. 

https://www.themediaengine.co/lce-elite

Aman Ghataura

We spent $29k on some LinkedIn Thought Leadership ads. 

I was shocked what happened.

Turns out...

They print. 💰

- $2k closed $200k for an agency - 10x ROI
- $9k closed $360k ARR for a SaaS - 17x ROI
- $18k closed $180k for a consultant - 10x ROI

We used to boost random LinkedIn posts... 

Then we studied all the top Thought Leader Ads across multiple accounts 

And made some big changes to improve
- Engagement Rates
- Qualified ICP Commenting / Liking
- Inbound DMs / Form Fills
- Booked Calls 

And now we're consistently driving higher returns for our clients with a combination of 
- Organic LinkedIn Posts
- Automated Connection Requests
- Boosted LinkedIn Posts
- Remote SDR Managing Inbox

Took me ages to work it out 

So I'm sharing a swipe file of the best Thought Leader Ads I've seen 

Even if you're not ready to turn them on right now.

Keep this in your war chest. 

Comment 'ADS' below and I'll DM it over

PS - The best part? These ads don't even look like ads. They blend right into the feed with all the original engagement intact.

Co-Founder @ Media Engine | LinkedIn Content, Ads & DMs

LinkedIn has changed...

This new 5-step playbook closed $6m+

Here we go: 

1. IDEATION

We ingest every source of novel & interesting insight into onboarding flows and our Claude AI brain
- Case Studies
- Internal Processes
- Competitor Posts  
- Industry Media
- Trending Topics (Twitter advanced search)
- Sales Calls Transcripts  (Fireflies.ai / Fathom.ai typically)
- Guided Interviews (Riverside if you want to repurpose to video later) 

↓

2. CREATION 

Ghostwriter (or Founder/CEO) and AI brain work together to create content following PPT framework
- Pain Posts (make ICP feel seen)
- Process Posts (educate ICP with steps, listicles - e.g. this post)
- Trend Posts (capture impressions by brand/trend jacking) 

Formats
- Create text based posts
- When see top 20% post, convert into Loom style video 
- Changes optimizaton from attention to consumption 

↓ 

3. GRADUATION 

Graduate top 10% of posts into LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads 
- Engagement objective
- Upload list of ideal contacts 
- Boost thought leadership ads into ICP
- Retarget website visitors and high intent engagers 
- Monitor key metrics (CPM, frequency, penetration, dwell time and  conversions) 

↓

4. INTENT SIGNALS 

Do this manually first, and then go into automations 
- Identify post likers / commenters (manually use Clay / Unipile) 
- Identify profile views (manually or use PhantomBuster
- Identify ad engagers (manually or use Fibbler / ZenABM)
- Qualify every company (manually or use Clay / Apify / RapidAPI)
- Qualify every lead (manually or use Clay / Apify / RapidAPI)

↓

5. OUTBOUND

Send warm DMs 
- Blank connection requests (if not connected) 
- Messaging using compliments / observations to increase reply rates
- Opt for manual first then automate using HeyReach.io
- Push into Instantly.ai (new integration with HeyReach.io available) or Smartlead


And boooom, you're now a billionaire (lol jk)

But seriously, if you want LinkedIn to start really generating you real pipeline.

This is the playbook you need to be following and building internally

----

P.S. DM if you want to skip the trial & error and install this into your business.

I repeated this hook 8x

7x times it has gone viral. 

The hook followed this formula

"I [ACHIEVEMENT]"

If we find something works on LinkedIn, we do 5x Iterations: 
(I'd argue you can do this for any organic social platform) 

1. Copy the post, but change the image
2. Copy the hook, but change the body and image 
3. Copy the hook, but change the format (e.g. image to video) 
4. Copy the body and image, change the hook 
5. Copy and paste the exact post 

Ever variation gives us new data: 
- Was the hook the reason it went viral?
- Does the image need to look a certain way? 
- Do we need to target specific emotional angles? 

In this case, the winning combination is a very specific opening hook with a specific style of image. Consistently it's helped us go viral AND generate inbound leads in the process. 

Internally, we call that hook formula ("I [ACHIEVEMENT]") a 'Credibility Statements'. 

They're 1 liners that prove you're good. 

E.g. The hook of this post is a Credibility Statement.

I've got internal documentation on credibility statements:
- How to use them
- 100 examples of them 

Comment 'STATEMENT' below and I'll ping it over 

Don't forget to send me a connection request

I am BEYOND excited

Just wrote 33 pages on our Scalable Thought Leader LinkedIn playbook

Took an age to put together and covers all the fun stuff...

- How to differentiate yourself in content 
- Winning content pillars / frameworks
- Identifying what to turn into ads and when 
- How to build audiences
- How to track performance
- How to budget correctly
- How to leverage intent signals

And loads more. 

Just putting the final touches on it. 

It's NOT ready yet, but comment 'WAITLIST' if you want to be the first to get access (I'll send it next week)

Instantly.ai & Perspective do this so damn well.

Their LinkedIn ads look different to other SaaS brands

Why? They've just hit Level 3. 

Level 1: Company Ads
Level 2: Founder Thought Leader Ads
Lever 3: Customer Thought Leader Ads 

They're using posts from customer personal profiles and running them as ads.

And unknowingly, I'm reading a lot of their ads, without realising their ads (until it's too late haha) 

- I know some of their customer names weirdly enough
- And I have a much deeper belief that they're good at what they do.

I don't know Instantly & Perspective numbers but I was on a call w/ another GTM SaaS who revealed their Customer Ads were their top performing in their ad account (and generated direct pipeline) vs the ad run from their founder. 

If you're reading this, you can graduate to Level 3 straight away + start building more pipeline faster. 

It's an easy playbook to run 

1. Reach out to current customers
2. Ask them to post about their experience with you
3. Draft the post for them, let them edit it
4. Once they post it, activate your team to engage with post
5. Head over to LinkedIn Ads Manager
6. Send request access to use their post as an ad 
7. Run it as an ad. 

Which other brands do you see running Customer Ads? 

Tag em below. 

(I want to build a swipe + do some analysis)

Best advice I've recieved:

When stuff is going well...

Remember, it's not going to go well forever. 

Double down, make the best use of the opportunity...

But start diversifying early.

We do the same thing with LinkedIn.

Organic is working. But it won't forever.

Start diversifying into paid ads to build a moat faster than the competition.

Everyone is flocking to this platform.

But you can make the gap wider.

Head of Instagram: "Stop posting" → lower reach 

On LinkedIn? It's the opposite. 

I love Adam Mosseri (Head of Instagram)'s stories. He's incredibly active and  transparent. He gives loads of insights into the Instagram Algo 

And most social platforms operate in similar ways. So it's a no brainer for any marketer to watch his content. 

Multiple times I've seen big overlaps with stuff I've seen on the LinkedIn algo and have been able to take advantage of it. 

STORY TIME: 

On Friday's story he replied to the question: "If I don't post for 4 months, is it hard to get the momentum back"

His answer (slightly paraphrased but keeping core to his message)
- It's true that it's hard to get the same amount of reach / impressions
- The longer you don't post, less information Instagram has about who your content should be served to
- Instagram has more information on other creators (so my inference here is that it will preferentially push their content) 

And LinkedIn probably has similar mechanics...

But from what I've observed, I think they have a different mechanism which takes more weight in the algorithm: 

- If you've never posted before, you seem to get a 'New Profile' boost. Lots of accounts I've worked on have done incredibly well on their first post. I remember reading Jake Ward's first post on LinkedIn and it went absolutely ballistic viral. Objectively, there is very little data on who this content should be served to, but it seems like LinkedIn will push it out widely and give it a very fair go. 

- Accounts that haven't posted for a long time, seem to get a 'I'm Back' boost when they start posting again. According to Insta logic, there is less data on the algo. But again, I think LinkedIn is rewarding an account for returning and dangling a juicy impression carrot. Also maybe it's because the stuff we work on together is better than their old content lol. I also saw this with my own content in the last month. I took a month off and I'm still basking in the 'I'm Back' impression glow. 

This is what it means for you on LinkedIn

1. If you take a month off from posting.... 
That's fine. It won't suck. (But ideally you shouldn't and compound whatever organic presence you've built) 

2. If you're a new account thinking about posting
Take advantage of your first post. Getting it right can get you instant ROI.
A few months ago I remember helping a client write their first ever post. We smashed through 20k impressions, generated ~8 calls and closed a couple deals. Happy to DM my first post framework to anyone who's never posted before on LinkedIn - happy to give you a guiding hand here. 

P.S. I've purposefully included his story here so you can hear his first hand description of it and the exact words he uses as the nuance is interesting. I 

P.P.S Also LinkedIn, who's your Adam Mosseri? This platform's missing that public, transparent creator voice.

2nd / 3rd time founders who want to start LinkedIn personal brands seem to battle internally with the same thing: 

Whenever I speak to them it's clear they have such rich experiences. 

- Acquiring / exiting companies
- Scaling companies to 100s of employees
- Founding, raising money etc 

They're multi dimensional, interesting, and have 100s of unique takes and stories. 

So they begin to find ways to meld all their experiences together and their positioning becomes this mish-mash of things - but in reality will struggle to work on this algorithm. 

They know this. 

So that causes an internal battle. It paralyses them from taking action. 

I've run enough 1:1 positioning sessions to confidently say there is a way to get around this... 

Here's a few points to help guide you on that journey 

1. Know your LinkedIn identity is not your whole identity. You're allowed to present a version of yourself on here that's not your complete in-person identity. 
2. Make the decision to solely focus on 1 thing for the purpose of LinkedIn for the next 6 months. This isn't permanent. It's an experiment
3. Work through all your professional experiences and cherry pick the specific stories that mirror who you want to attract inbound. Only tell those stories on LinkedIn. You're being selective about the version of yourself you present. 

Now over time, you'll get to stage where you can make your online identity more multi faceted. Where you can introduce your side quests, your hobbies.

If we treat activities as temporary, and not permanent. 

It's much easier to get started

And hey, let's have fun in the process.

Our new LinkedIn workflow 

Responsible for $2m in pipeline in last quarter 

Here we go: 

1. IDEATION
We ingest every source of novel & interesting insight into onboarding flows and our Claude AI brain - and then surface the validated ideas (proven to work on social) 
- Case Studies
- Internal Processes
- Competitor Posts 
- Industry Media
- Trending Topics (Twitter advanced search)
- Sales Calls Transcripts (Fireflies.ai / Fathom.ai )
- Guided Interviews (Riverside if you want to repurpose to video later) 

↓

2. UNIQUE INSIGHT 
We layer on our unique insight beyond the validated idea. 
- What's our unique take?
- What first party data do we have? 
- Are we for or against the general idea and why? 

↓

3. FORMAT MATCHING 

Ghostwriter (or Founder/CEO) and AI brain work together to create content following PPT framework
- Pain Posts (make ICP feel seen)
- Process Posts (educate ICP with steps, listicles - e.g. this post)
- Trend Posts (capture impressions by brand/trend jacking) 

Formats
- Create text based posts
- When see top 20% post, convert into Loom style video 
- Changes optimizaton from attention to consumption 

↓ 

4. REPURPOSE FOR CONSUMPTION 
We take our winning posts and repurpose into a longer form video asset
- Graduating from 'Attention' into 'Consumption'
- From text/image into Loom / Tella video / walkthrough
- Unlocks 'Video Watch Time' data inside Ads Manager
- Encourages deeper consumption and leads to higher quality leads

↓

5. REDO POSTS
Identify any posts that didn't get leads but got >2x impressions
- Understand why they received more impressions
- Redo post to capture more impressions (ride wave)
- Redo post to target more qualified user but still get impressions (narrow down) 

↓

6. GRADUATION

Graduate posts that generate qualified leads / profile viewers into LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads
- Engagement objective
- Upload list of ideal contacts
- Boost thought leadership ads into ICP
- Retarget website visitors and high intent engagers
- Monitor key metrics (CPM, frequency, penetration, dwell time and conversions)

↓

7. INTENT
Do this manually first, and then go into automations 
- Identify post likers / commenters (manually use Clay / Unipile) 
- Identify profile views (manually or use PhantomBuster)
- Identify ad engagers (manually or use Fibbler / ZenABM)
- Qualify every lead (manually or use Clay / Apify / RapidAPI)

↓

8. OUTBOUND
Send warm DMs 
- Blank connection requests (if not connected) 
- Messaging using compliments / observations to increase reply rates
- Opt for manual first then automate using HeyReach.io/ Aimfox
- Push into Instantly.ai / Smartlead


If you want LinkedIn to start generating real pipeline.

This is the playbook you need to save and share with your team. 

----

P.S. I'm launching a 34 page playbook this week. It's taken me 3 weeks to write. Early feedback: "This is INSANELY good - are you sure you want to give this away?" 

Save this post & comment 'WAITLIST' to get access

I've never seen Meta or Google do this

LinkedIn tells you what % of people your ads have reached.

It's called Penetration Rate. 

Penetration Rate =  Unique Reach / Audience Size * 100%
Example = 3000/15000 * 100% = 20% Penetration Rate

If you have a small potential list of clients (few thousand people) it's stupidly powerful to know what %age of your audience are actually seeing your ads.

For most businesses, just having you target client aware you even exist is half the battle. 

And Penetration Rate can infer some interesting things about your campaigns: 


LOW PENETRATION RATE

If Penetration Rate = low AND you've bid high / spent budget: 
--> Likely your audience is inactive on LinkedIn. 

FLAT PENETRATION RATE

If Penetration Rate = not increasing AND you're bidding & spending more
--> Likely you've hit your full LinkedIn active audience

HIGH PENETRATION RATE

If Penetration Rate = high AND no conversions 
--> Likely your audience is seeing your ads, but somethings wrong. The messaging isn't landing / offer isn't converting / marketing cycle is longer than you think 

If you know:
- Your audience is active on Linkedin
- Your offer is converting / getting traction
- You've got a few grand in ad budget

It's a no brainer to start forcing content into your audience on LinkedIn

Organic posts + thought leader ads = Best 2025 LinkedIn strategy 

Here’s the step-by-step play


1. MAPPING

Create an exact list of 500-1,500 companies you’d like to become clients of yours. We don’t necessarily need a list of contacts (found you get 90% match rates vs 60% when uploading companies vs contacts) 


2. VALUE PROPS 

Define exactly what 
Makes you different to competitors
Makes you safe to buy 
Makes you specific to your ideal customer

For example, you could be an ads agency that creates high volume AI ads and only work with fashion brands, and you have lots of internal data to prove that your mechanism works better than everyone else 


3. CONTENT

Create 30 amazing pieces of LinkedIn content. Speak exactly to your value props and your mapped accounts you’re targeting. 

We want these posts to perform well organically. Go for 100% text / text + image posts. Don’t do any video (yet)

When a post does well, do it again but this time make it Loom / screen share video (we want this for later) 


4. BOOSTING

We’re now going to boost your top 15% of posts into your mapped accounts. Make sure every post is edited with CTAs & links so we can measure clicks to landing pages.

Use Engagement objective. Create a separate campaign for every ad so you can really manually control bids and ad spend. Rotate in and out content.

LinkedIn even shows you exactly how much you penetrated your target list and how often they saw your content

After 5-7x rotate out the ad and push a new one in.  Use this formula to work out monthly budgets: Audience Size * 50% Activity Rate * 5x Frequency * CPM / 1000

5. HOT AUDIENCES

Build audiences of people who’ve engaged with your image ads, watched 50% of your videos. This will feed into your retargeting pool. Push all your posts that make you ‘safe to buy’ into them.

LinkedIn even shows you which companies got paid impressions / engaged with your content etc. 

Send this data into Clay, enrich and hook up to a tool like HeyReach to send automated outreach. 

If you want to avoid paying a hefty tech stack, do this every week. And then every day open every single ad and send connection requests and message to likers, commenters, and profile viewers. 

CONGRATS - If you've run this playbook - you're officially a Scalable Thought Leader 

Like these three clients we worked with 

- Consultant spends $5k and closes $55k every single month
- Agency spent $3k and booked $2.5m pipeline in 90 days 
- B2B SaaS spent $9k, booked $1.9m+ in pipeline and closed $350k

P.S. I can set this up 1:1 with you - DM me. 

Save and share this post with your team for later.

Last week, a LinkedIn post got a client a $200k lead

But he posted it 4 months ago. 

- Posted it 4 months ago
- The post did well 
- So it graduated into a Thought Leader Ad

The key was uploading an ICP list to LinkedIn

1. Scraped a full list of the ICP using Clay & LinkedIn
2. Enriched with some extra data from Apify 
3. Uploaded that list to LinkedIn Ads Manager
4. Decided which job titles we wanted to see that post 

It wasn't the only post that made it to LinkedIn Ads. 

Every time we saw a post: 
- Generate qualified profile views / followers and/or getting leads, they were contenders for graduation
- Get 3X average impressions organically they were typically investigated and then the hooks repurposed into other posts to improve organic performance of lead generators 

They were then edited - adding CTA links at the bottom and making the hooks tailored for the ICP --- not the algo 

And then every post was tracked for Commenters / Likers / Engagers. And a remote SDR would work on those leads. Their job was to start conversation with warm traffic (instead of trying to convince cold leads that our client is Safe, Different and Relevant to them.

My post got 300 impressions

It’s not because I chose a bad idea:
-> The idea was bad.

It’s not because I wrote a bad hook:
-> The hook was bad

It’s not because I used a bad image:
-> The image was bad


Equivalently…


My post got 10,000 impressions

It’s not because I chose a great idea. 
-> The idea was good

It’s not because I wrote a great hook
-> The hook was good

It’s not because I used a great image
-> The image was good



I used to blame myself for every failure and take credit for every win.

And that’s just a rocky dopamine junkie rollercoaster

It’s far easier to remove yourself

- Act like a consultant
- Measure objectively 
- Forget the time you invested


I teach my clients the same thing

1. It’s not you -> don’t blame yourself

2. It’s not the algorithm -> don’t blame 
something you can’t control 

3. It’s the post -> you can change that


We’re on an awesome run with a client I’ve featured in the images (not revealing so we can keep going without attracting too many competitors) 

- Booked 30+ calls with 8/9 Figure ICP clients
- $800k+ in pipeline value
- 5 contracts sent out




—-
P.S. @bonusfootage on Insta summed this up so well I had to post it here.

graphical user interface, text, application

Posted on LinkedIn.

3 months later, that same post is booking in 1 call / day. 

The algorithm gave it a boost for around a week.

But what gave it long term longevity was:

1. Uploading a list of target companies to LinkedIn
2. Editing the post with a link at the bottom to book a call 
3. Creating a campaign inside LinkedIn ads manager
4. Turning the post into a Thought Leader Ad
5. Boosting that Thought Leader Ad into target companies
6. Guaranteeing impressions with the perfect ICP

This is what I call the 'Scalable Thought Leader' 

Put energy and effort into creating organic content.

And then just pay for the distribution to make sure it keeps getting in front of target customers.

And to start only costs $1k-$3k in ad spend per month. 

Peanuts compared to the ROI.

I took a consultant through the PPP framework in 90 minutes. They closed just over $100k in the following 12 weeks. 

PPP = Person, Pain, Problem
Why = To get the exact client you want INBOUND. 

Here's the framework (save it down) 

P1: Person
- Define the person you're selling to firmographically
- What are the attributes you would put into a lead database
- Job Title
- Company Size
- Location 
- Revenue 

P2: Pain 
- What are the things that the Person says out loud as complains
- If you were unwell, this would be the symptoms you were suffering from
- E.g. "Runny nose" --> "My clients churn fast" 
- E.g. "Headache" --> "CPMs are really high this quarter" 
- The more 'present' and 'symptomatic' these are, the more you should reference them early in your posts 
- This is what your Person understands. 

P3: Problem
- What are the root causes of the Person's Pain
- This is what the Doctor diagnoses because of all your Symptoms
- E.g. "Runny nose + Headache + Winter" = Flu? 
- E.g. "High Client Churn + Team Churn + Can't Delegate" = Culture Issue? 
- You'll find your clients have many Problems for their Pains.
- You need to choose the Problem you can solve, how fast you can alleviate their Pain, depending on your Solutions 

This framework is general enough it works for any niche
And specific enough it'll actually help you

Particularly useful for experienced individuals who can speak to LOADS of different People - but need a little help focusing on their exact ideal. 

Let me know if this is helpful.

I've got a few more frameworks like this.

A client just graduated to Level 5 of LinkedIn 

Why? To add $20k+ new MRR monthly

Level 1: 
• Post from Founder account
• Send outreach from Founder account

→ Now we want to increase volume.. 

Level 2: 
• Post from Founder account
• Send outreach from Founder account
• Send outreach from 1-3 team profiles 

→ Now we want to double down on our best posts

Level 3: 
• Post from Founder account
• Send outreach from Founder account
• Send outreach from 1-3 team profiles 
• Run Thought Leader Ads from Founder account

→ Now we want to scale organic impressions without the Founder

Level 4: 
• Post from Founder account
• Send outreach from Founder account
• Send outreach from 1-3 team profiles 
• Run Thought Leader Ads from Founder account
• Post content from 1-3 team profiles 

→ Now we want to diversify ad content mix 

Level 5: 
• Post from Founder account
• Send outreach from Founder account
• Send outreach from 1-3 team profiles 
• Run Thought Leader Ads from Founder account
• Post content from 1-3 team profiles 
• Run Thought Leader Ads from Customer accounts

→ Next step - activate more of the team 

Level 6: 
• Post from Founder account
• Send outreach from Founder account
• Send outreach from 3+ team profiles 
• Run Thought Leader Ads from Founder account
• Post content from 3+ team profiles 
• Run Thought Leader Ads from Customer accounts

To go from Level 1 to 6 requires you to:
- Use the right software
- Set up right databases
- Build the right AI prompts 
- Incentivise your team correctly
- Engage with customer accounts intelligently 

We had to build the systems to help out clients go from Level 1 to 6. 

I've recorded a Loom video showing how you can go from 1 to 6 too. 

Comment 'SYSTEM' and I'll share it.

"When should I run LinkedIn Ads?"

Are you a Cautious Cory or a Confident Cam? 

Cautious Cory: 
- Want to know their ad dollars are spent efficiently
- Have limited budget and it needs to show ROI in 3 months.

If you're a Cautious Cory, wait till:
- Know specific hooks get you impressions
- Know specific posts generate them leads 
- You can budget $5k to $9k ad spend over next 3 months

Cautious Cory opts to spend more time in Organic land before boosting into Paid. 

Confident Cam: 
- Know their audience lives on LinkedIn 
- Know it's a trust game and it takes time
- Can spend on ads for 6 months+ without an issue 
- Have a proven offer that's worked on LinkedIn or another channel

If you're a Confident Cam, don't wait 
- Start boosting content and measuring pipeline signals
- Get going before you're competition wakes up to LinkedIn 

Confident Cam typically gets going faster. They make more bets. 

I work with Cautious Corys and Confident Cams all the time. 

Both get awesome results and become scalable thought leaders. 


---
P.S. I'm 70% through my Scalable Thought Leader Playbook. It generated $2m in pipeline from LinkedIn Ads for a single client. Comment 'Waitlist' and I'll send it to you when it's done.

Don't copy big influencers on LinkedIn.

Here's what they're doing:
- Optimizing for the biggest market
- Selling to the 'beginners' 
- Selling low cost services

On the other hand - if you're selling expensive, sophisticated solutions, you need to get comfortable with ignoring the impressions metrics and focusing (mostly) on qualified profile viewers, followers and of course leads.

The best way to achieve this is to use the TIMELINE EXPERT framework. 
(I've introduced this to a few consultants this week and they're loving it) 

--> This is not explained in the video so read it here.

PAST: 
- Talk about your previous experiences.
- Open posts with "When I was a" or "When we", "At [LastCompany]" 
- Only experts have war stories and real experiences. Lean into these as the bedrock of why you're competent

PRESENT: 
- Clearly state why you're an expert today
- Do this with credibility statements that you pepper into your content. Some examples of competency statements for example are: 
- Written 6,000+ LinkedIn posts. Worked on over 200+ LinkedIn accounts. Driven $5m+ in Revenue from LinkedIn. Etc....

FUTURE: 
- Provide your commentary on what's happening in today's market.
- This brings your expertise into the relevancy of NOW
- Example "This is what AI means for EV market" or "Figma's IPO is a warning signal for consumer sentiment" 

There's of course more to being an expert than these tips.
- Have high standards for a future customer
- Genuinely good at what you do
- Spent years doing it 


New post format - what do you think? 

P.S. Comment SPEAR and I'll share with your my post templates that generate leads (not likes)

LinkedIn ABM ads tech stack 

(quick and dirty edition)

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator ($125 /mo)
- Build your account list
- Build your lead lists 

2. Clay ($134 /mo) 
- Qualify every single company / lead
- Create a clean lead / company list to upload 

3. LeadMagic ($60 /mo)
- If uploading contacts to LinkedIn, use to get verified emails (required for matching) 

4. Fibbler ($89 /mo)
- Initially you don't need this, just click over to the Audience Companies tab to see exactly who engaged
- Worth investing if you're looking for cleaner UI / better reporting / ad scheduling

5. Supermetrics ($43 /mo)
- Don't need until you want a bit more automation
- Send LinkedIn ads data directly into spreadsheet for analysis 

I see 1 & 2 as non-optional. 
You can cancel 2. once you're done. 
3, 4 and 5 are dependent on your situation

HubSpot's LinkedIn game deserves an award.

Here's a breakdown: 

Level 1: Post from Founder account
- Dharmesh Shah's content is SO engaging.
- I didn't know about Hubspot's LinkedIn presence until I saw his content 
- It's both fresh, interesting + develops his unique personality / experiences. 
- If you're a founder you have to have a scroll through his posts. 

Level 2: Post from Team accounts
- I then came across Kieran Flanagan's AI content (exceptional)
- Their content doesn't read promotional NOR does it feel like they're being incentivised / forced to post. It's real + authentic. 
- If you're posting already, the next step is to give our team the tools / encouragement for them to post too. 
• Send outreach from 1-3 team profiles 

Level 2.5: BONUS  -- PARTNER Content. 
- It's hard to discuss Hubspot without mentioning their partner/agency program
- Just a quick search for 'Hubspot' on LinkedIn ad library and you'll see how many other agencies are creating content. 
- Going down the grape vine I found Dan Stillgoe - produces awesome content that positions himself both individually as an agency and also enables him to have a strong relationship with Hubspot. 
- From what I can see - Hubspot don't promote his content on their own ads (opportunity?)

Level 3: Thought Leader Ads
- Looks like HubSpot are exploiting the benefits of running ads from personal profiles
- They've enabled multiple team members across different geographies with different job titles. Some of these profiles don't post as often but they're still running a couple posts here and there for boosting as thought leader ads. 
- I personally love the static image from Yves Bourgoin - it feels less produced + probably gets a higher CTR than the polished talking head videos. 
- Can also see their running an interesting campaign around Loop Marketing

Level 4: Customer Ads [unactivated?] 
- The final frontier: running ads from your customer's LinkedIn profiles
- I couldn't see Hubspot doing this but they must have 100s of potential customers open to this idea: 
1. Find an evangelist customer
2. Interview them + collect case study
3. Ask (or incentivise) them to post organically about their experience
4. Boost that post into companies exactly like them

This is a mature program - I don't think any co. should beat themselves up for not executing like Hubspot

BUT - at a minimum a Founder / Leader / Execs should be posting on LinkedIn.

Every time you post you're building awareness, building credibility, creating optionality for yourself and helping build pipeline. 


--
P.S. I also have an internal notion guide on how to get your team to start posting (and some AI prompts) - comment "hubspot" + connect and I'll ping it over.

Tom Hunt

$3.6m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Jan 2014.

I'm walking home from a depressing New Year's trip to Oslo with an ex. girlfriend.

It's raining in East London.

I made a decision:

I would replace my management consulting salary (£42,000) by the end of the year.

I had no idea from where, but that was the goal...

I just about hit it and left the corporate world.

And I haven't been back since.

Fast forward a decade and I've:

- Tried and failed with 17 businesses
- Invested in 11
- Learnt a LOT

The one that is finally working is called Fame:

- We have a weird culture (in a good way)
- We start and grow podcasts for B2B businesses
- We are fully remote and have 75 full-time team members

I live for our awesome team at Fame, building businesses and great marketing.

I post about them here 🤗

Founder & CEO

We start and grow the world's most profitable B2B podcasts.

Clients include:

👉 IDEO
👉 Workday
👉 HighRadius
👉 People.ai
👉 Zendesk
👉 Bevy
👉 Circle
👉 Suzy
👉 Mazars
👉 LeanData
👉 CXL
👉 Ramp
👉 Alibaba
👉 Signify
👉 eToro

We don't review CVs.

We don't use an ATS.

We don't ask for cover letters.

And we barely spend money on job ads.


Here's our hiring process:

1. Candidates come inbound
2. We review their LinkedIn profile
3. They do a short test task
4. First interview: competency-based
5. Final interview: values-based

That's it.


No six-round marathons
No "upload your resume then retype it"
No AI scanning for keywords


Just people looking at real work and having conversations.

HR SaaS businesses told everyone that hiring needs to be complex.

It doesn't.


You don't need expensive software to find good people.

Agree?

$4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

No alternative text description for this image

I cancelled a 1-1 with someone on my team.


Why?

- They were thriving
- Their OKRs were progressing well
- I had nothing meaningful to contribute

So why have the meeting?

Why waste their time because I'm insecure about doing my job?


It's called macro-management.

HINT: the opposite of micro-management.


Here’s how it works:

- They work where they want
- You provide the insight, tools and resources
- You remove barriers, blockers and distractions
- They decide the "how"
- You trust them

Put simply:

You enable.
You assist.

Then you stay in your lane...

Not theirs.

Agree?

We hired a project manager for $7 per hour in 2022.

Now he's earning $40K a year.

That's higher than 98% of earners in the Philippines.


We made him a deal:

"Where you are right now limits what we can pay you because you don't generate enough value. But the more problems you can solve for us, the more we can pay you."

E.g. we hired him for what he could become, not what he was.


He got a payrise in year 2, then in year 3, he takes on another role.

Now he's:

- Project manager
- Video editor

Maybe more in the future.


The best hires have the right attitude toward growth.

Skill gaps close with time and effort.

Character gaps rarely close.

No one is clapping when you get the second resignation email of the day.

No one is clapping at 6:37am on a Saturday as you’re combing through the P&L.

No one is clapping when it’s your 17th decision of the day.

No one is clapping when you're the only person around to reply to the angry customer.

No one is clapping when payroll looms and the bank balance isn’t where it should be.

No one is clapping when you can’t think of anything else on a Sunday afternoon.



There’s a lot of hype around starting a business these days…

I’m not sure it’s for everyone.

Most people chase salaries and titles.
Smart people choose who they work with.

Specifically: their manager.

Here's why:

A bad manager...
- Drains your energy
- Protects their position
- Watches your every move

A great manager...
- Explains why things work
- Protects you from politics
- Supports your development


The truth?

You may spend more time with your manager than your spouse.

Choose wisely.

Fame bootstrapped to $4.5M ARR by charging LESS.

Plus we:

- Spend less than 2% of revenue on ads
- Have a 1 person sales team
- Raised $0

How?

By focusing on the one metric everyone ignores...

Retention.


1️⃣ Strong inbound engine

Outbound and ads cost more, both to book a sales call, but also in the skill (and therefore cost) of the person who needs to run the call.

Instead:

- SEO
- Personal brand
- Bottom of the funnel Google Ads


2️⃣ Charge less

E.g. the Amazon model.

The more you charge, the more likely you will be cut when the CFO and CEO review the monthly P&L.


3️⃣ Objective performance metrics

We used to track client happiness, now we track client objectives.

Happy clients churn, successful clients don't.


4️⃣ Build a retention culture

The team laugh everytime I say "retention is the foundation of growth" because I say it so much.

Hire, fire and promote based on retention.



The formula:

1️⃣ Strong inbound engine
2️⃣ Charge less
3️⃣ Track objective performance metrics
4️⃣ Build a culture of retention

And please, say it after me:

Retention is the foundation of growth.

As soon as I met Cristian and Alexandru in person, I knew I had to go.

They are the first reason I'm hosting a panel at Tekpon AI Summit 2025 in Bucharest.


The second reason is that I've spent the last 5 years working in my bedroom (pretty much).

$4.5m ARR from behind a screen.

It's working.

But now it's time to crawl out of the cave, and into real life.


So if you're in Bucharest on November 25th, come say hi.

Let's talk AI.
Let's talk marketing.
Let's talk LinkedIn.

Just let's actually talk.

If you can’t share an agenda for the meeting, we shouldn’t be meeting.

When Taplio was acquired by lemlist, they got:

- $2m upfront
- Another $6m for hitting growth targets


I asked him if it was time for beach and cocktails...

"Absolutely not."

Tibo starting sourcing young, hungry founders to build more products.

He now runs 5 products, each with difference technical founders, whilst he focuses on their growth and building his personal brand.

Now $6m ARR.


The next exit will be much bigger.

Find out how in this episode of Confessions of a B2B Entrepreneur below 👇

One of our team members' machines was compromised.

And a client found out about it.

Somehow their Slack log in was posted in a data dump, which was flagged to a client's security team.

We immediately took the compromised machine offline for deep cleaning and changed a load of other passwords.

In the end, no breach occurred, but it was a scare.

This would likely not have happened if we were using Keeper Security, Inc. 

It’s the highest-rated password manager in the world for a reason. 

It solves both the security and the productivity problem:

- Zero-Trust Security: Keeper built its entire platform on a zero-trust, zero-knowledge architecture so your business data is encrypted on your device before it ever reaches their servers

- Instant Access: The KeeperFill feature automatically enters usernames and complex passwords for you

Keeper is built to scale with your business (securely) from day one.

Check out their Cyber Week offer linked in the first comment 👇

#ad #keepersecurity #cyberweek

Brand partnership • $4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

taplio

The Battle

Aman Ghataura

Tom Hunt

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taplio

The Battle

Aman Ghataura

Tom Hunt

Followers

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