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 LOTThe 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 membersI live for our awesome team at Fame, building businesses and great marketing.And 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 need to let them go.”

I’m in a 1-1 and a manager thinks someone in their team isn’t performing.

I'm in shock, to me they seemed enthusiastic and a culture fit.


We dug into the details:

- What weren’t they doing?
- Why weren’t they doing it?

The manager thought they either didn't understand or couldn't do the role.

Then I ask:

“How did onboarding go?”

“What do you mean by onboarding?” they reply.


And that's when we found the issue:

We skipped the onboarding process and replaced it with "a couple of calls".


If you’re recruiting right, you owe it to yourself to onboard right.

You can’t expect someone to join and start performing, you need to set them up to succeed.

Onboard right or do it twice.

Agree?

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

Being easy to work with is a skill.

It’s honed with practice.


I call it, being a Working Legend.

Here’s how you do it:

 - Seek feedback
- Be collaborative
- Own your mistakes
- Respect others’ opinions
- Maintain a positive attitude
- Don’t take credit for others’ work
- Offer solutions, not just problems
- Respond quickly to simple requests
- Don’t pretend to have all the answers

What am I missing?

We have 77 full-time team members scattered around the globe.


Building a remote team sounds simple, but the biggest headache is the tech gap.

Most founders do not see these real operational challenges coming.

I spent a decade building businesses, and the move to fully remote with Fame was a massive learning curve.

People talk about the freedom of remote work, but nobody tells you about the friction that quietly damages your culture before it even forms.


When you hire someone new, they need to feel like they are part of the team from day one.

If they sit around for a week waiting for a laptop to arrive, you have already lost that initial momentum.

It is a practical nightmare getting reliable kits to people fast without it becoming a full-time job for your operations person.


Then there are the hidden costs.

Buying hardware upfront is a massive cash drain.

Every pound you lock up in a laptop that depreciates the second it leaves the box is a pound you cannot spend on a big hire or a new growth experiment.


I realised we needed to stop buying stuff that rots on our balance sheet.

We use Raylo to remove this friction.

- It takes 60 seconds to set up a subscription, we pay £0 upfront, and the tech arrives the next day.

- They just launched the new Apple MacBooks for pre-order, and they start shipping from the 10th of March.

- We get flexible terms for our team, and we upgrade for free so we are never stuck with outdated kit.

Running a remote business is challenging.

But Raylo offers a reliable way to get team tech and ensure they feel valued from day one.

You keep your capital for growth.

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

Jakub Zajicek

Chief Marketing Officer

Back in March 2020, I co-founded Speak On Podcasts with a partner from the UK. We grew it into one of the world’s leading agencies for booking podcast interviews, securing over 2,500 appearances for more than 125 leaders from top B2B brands like Canva, Gong, Paddle, and Toggl.

In December 2022, Chapman Capital acquired the agency (source). I stayed on for over a year to ensure a smooth transition and maintain high service quality for our clients. In April 2025, the business was acquired again — this time by UK company Fame (source), which integrated the agency and team into its portfolio under the name “Fame Connect.”

In 2024, I co-founded Demandi.co with a partner from the US. As COO, I helped over 300 B2B professionals create nearly 2,000 short LinkedIn videos. I built the MVP, ran operations, and drove revenue and pipeline growth. I stepped away voluntarily due to a difference in vision with my co-founder.

LinkedIn has been a key acquisition channel in both businesses. I’ve tested it all — posting daily for 188 days straight, reaching out to 50+ people a day, and most recently, running paid ads. All of it generated deals worth over $1M.

Today, I work independently, helping B2B brands and individuals become more visible and get more clients using LinkedIn.

I live in the Czech Republic with my wife. I have type 1 diabetes. I run and work out. 🙂

Founder

Helping SaaS brands reach new partners with PartnerOutreach.io

Are you stuck under 1k impressions on every post?
Only get “pity likes” from 4 people you know?
Tired of it all? 😫

I was too.

↓

So I built a system that guarantees reach WITHOUT relying on the algorithm or going viral.

You can get it here, free: https://lnkd.in/gK9Au5br

I spent $1000s running it for myself and my clients... and the results are wild! 🤯

✅ One client targeted a tiny audience of just 25k people in the UK. The very next day, 2 senior executives (perfect fit) asked to learn more about their offer. Promotion spend? £25.

✅ When I launched a brand-new offer, I used the same system. Within 7 hours I had my first call booked (after spending less than $7). Before that, my posts never broke 200 impressions.

✅ Another client used it to reach US execs in the hospitality industry. Within 2 days, 3 of them signed up for his weekly seminar. Total ad spend? Under $50. (And all of them showed up.)

↓

I broke down my EXACT step-by-step process in a free guide.

Grab it here: https://lnkd.in/gK9Au5br

PS: It gives you everything you need to DIY the whole thing yourself.

Founder, JZ Consulting | LinkedIn Organic & Paid for B2B Founders & Executives | 300+ clients since 2019 (incl. Gong, Canva, Paddle) | Built and sold #1 B2B podcast booking agency

There are 3 ways to win on LinkedIn right now.

#1 Content & Commenting

Pros:
+ Builds trust and authority over time
+ People feel like they already know you before you ever talk
+ Compounds. Your best posts keep working months later
+ Comments on other people's posts put you in front of their audience for free

Cons:
- Organic reach is declining. More people posting = less visibility for everyone
- Takes months of consistency before you see real results
- Likes and comments are not meetings. You can have great engagement and zero pipeline
- You are waiting for people to come to you. It is passive by nature

#2 Outreach

Pros:
+ Direct. You choose exactly who you want to talk to
+ Fastest way to start conversations with decision-makers
+ You control the volume. More messages = more conversations
+ Results can start within days, not months

Cons:
- Most messages get ignored because the person has never heard of you
- Done wrong, it burns your reputation and feels like spam
- Hard to scale without it becoming generic and impersonal

#3 Ads

Pros:
+ Instant reach to exactly the right people without relying on the algo
+ LinkedIn ads are still underpriced compared to Google and Meta for B2B
+ You can retarget everyone who engages so you stay top of mind
+ Scales. You can reach thousands of ideal clients in your first week

Cons:
- You need to have an offer that works well for cold audiences
- Most people boost posts with no strategy and conclude ads are too expensive
- You need content worth promoting. Bad content + ads = expensive bad content
- Views and clicks are not meetings unless something else converts them

Bonus #4: Combine all three

Content builds trust. Ads amplify it to the right people. Outreach converts the warm signals into conversations.

In other words...

Your content attracts your ideal clients. Ads make sure they actually see it, even if the algorithm buries your organic reach. Every view, like, comment, follow, and website visit gets tracked. Then outreach goes only to people already engaging with you, in your voice, personalized, warm.

That is the difference between isolated LinkedIn marketing and integrated LinkedIn marketing.

Had a call with Ilan Asseo, co-founder of Kakiyo last week. And he said something that surprised me... 😳

For context: Kakiyo is an AI SDR platform that basically runs your Linkedln outreach on autopilot.

I asked Ilan: can my clients review the replies before they go out?

He said no.

Not "we'll add it to the roadmap." Not "we're thinking about it." Just: "this is not our philosophy. This is not how we believe it should work."

And I f*cking loved that.

He didn't soften it. He didn't try to keep me warm with a maybe. He explained why they built it this way, why it's better for the end result, and left it at that. You're either okay with it or you're not.

Now, I know many people are not comfortable with full autopilot. Some founders want control. Me included.

But I respect the hell out of a founder who tells a potential agency partner "no, we don't do that" instead of saying whatever gets the deal done. Most founders in his position would say "great idea, it's on our roadmap" and never build it.
Ilan just said no.

That's what makes brands brands. Not the positioning doc. Not the messaging framework. The thing you actually believe when someone is sitting right there asking you to bend.

What's the thing you believe that you keep hedging because it might cost you a deal? Stop hedging it.

I'd rather have 500 impressions from CEOs than 50,000 from other marketers.

Most B2B founders get this backwards.

They see a post hit 15,000 impressions and feel successful. Then they check their pipeline. Zero inquiries. Zero calls. Zero revenue.

They're winning a game that doesn't matter.

Viral content appeals to everyone. That's the problem.

You need to appeal to your specific ICP. The executives who can write checks. The founders who need what you sell.

I posted daily for 100+ days. Some posts got 5K views. Some got 200. It was random.

The algorithm isn't your friend. It's a slot machine.

Stop gambling with your business.

Control your reach. Stop praying for it.

Founder, JZ Consulting | I help B2B founders book 5+ meetings p/mo with content, ads, and outreach.

The COO of LinkedIn records most of his videos walking around the block on his phone. No studio. No script. He just explains what's happening with LinkedIn while he's outside.

I'm actually moving more in this direction with my clients. Less "let's set up your home studio with the ring light and the backdrop." More "grab your phone, pretend we're on FaceTime, and just talk."

It tends to work better because it feels like you're letting someone in on something rather than presenting at them. Especially now, when people can smell AI-generated and overproduced content from a mile away, the imperfections are what make it feel real.

LinkedIn is a channel. Nothing more, nothing less... 🤷‍♂️

It's NOT some sort of an "online Tamagotchi" that you need to look after for 2 hours a day... It's just a channel! 

The same Instagram is a channel. Or a newsletter. Or a podcast.

But the thing is... LinkedIn influencers make it seem like it's something way more significant than that. It's not.

It's a platform to either FIND A JOB or FIND NEW CUSTOMERS.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And guess what!!!

There are infinite ways to win...

There are people who never comment and still get meetings.

There are people who just post content and get meetings.

There are people who just run ads and get meetings.

And there are people who ONLY SEND DMs from totally unoptimized profiles and still get meetings.

What matters is that you find the strategy that works for YOU and squeeze the absolute maximum out of it.

Don't let anyone else to tell you otherwise.

Especially the influencers...

For months, I buried links in the comments.

Everyone said links kill reach. So I listened.

Then I started running Thought Leader Ads.

And I realized something: when you're paying for distribution, the algorithm penalty doesn't matter.

I ran a post with a direct link. It got 6 likes. That's it.

But it drove massive landing page clicks and actual revenue.

The rules are different when you control who sees your content.

Whatever the gurus tell you to avoid—links, direct offers, selling on the first interaction—feel free to just do it when you're paying for reach.

The embarrassment? It's in your head.

Almost nobody is watching your organic reach anyway.

And the ones who are? Probably not your buyers.

That's a good thing.

Let that thought set you free.

Here's something I learned from running my podcast booking agency.

We booked 2,500+ interviews for executives. And the ones who got the most out of it weren't the best speakers. They were the ones with the clearest positioning.

If you can't explain in one sentence who you help and what you help them with, no amount of content will fix that. Not podcasts, not LinkedIn posts, not videos.

Positioning comes first. Content is just distribution of that positioning.

When I work with founders now, we don't start with "what should your first post be?" We start with "what should you be known for?"

Once that's clear, content almost writes itself. Before that, every post feels like a struggle.

taplio

The Battle

Tom Hunt

Jakub Zajicek

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreTom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJakub Zajicek's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Tom Hunt

Jakub Zajicek

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJakub Zajicek's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreTom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance